The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was enacted by the 104th U.S. Congress and signed into law on August 21, 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton. The act is far-reaching in its impact, and it’s essential for entities bound by this act to understand it.
It led to the development of country-wide standards to safeguard sensitive patient health data from being disclosed without patients' consent or knowledge. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued the HIPAA Privacy Rule to roll out the HIPAA requirements. The HIPAA Security Rule safeguards a subset of data covered by the Privacy Rule.
Continue reading to learn more about HIPAA and how companies can comply with HIPAA. You’ll see that using the right technology can help your business adhere to the regulations. When considering the potential penalties for running afoul of the rules, you’ll appreciate the importance of taking the appropriate measures to safeguard patient information.
What Is HIPAA?
The primary objective of HIPPA is protecting data privacy and security as they concern patients’ medical information. When considering high-profile cases of data breaches and ransomware attacks, you can appreciate the importance of measures designed to safeguard confidential data.
The federal law overrides state regulations on protecting medical data unless the state law is deemed stronger than HIPAA. HIPAA has several essential purposes to know about:
1. Offer ongoing health insurance coverage for staff who lose or change their jobs.
2. Cut healthcare expenses by standardizing the transmission of financial and administrative transactions.
3. Boost access to long-term care options.
4. Increase access to health insurance.
5. Fight fraud and inefficiency in healthcare delivery and health insurance.
How do you know if HIPAA applies to your company? That’s a good question. It applies to entities or companies directly handling patient health data or personal health records. So, if you operate a medical practice, you can be sure that HIPAA applies to your business. There are three categories for covered entities. They are as follows:
1. Healthcare Providers: Healthcare providers include doctors, nursing homes, clinics, pharmacies, dentists, and other related entities.
2. Healthcare Clearinghouses: Healthcare clearinghouses process non-standard health data they get from other entities.
3. Health Plans: Healhtplans include company health plans, insurers, health maintenance organizations, government healthcare programs, and military healthcare programs.
Ways Companies Can Adhere to HIPAA Rules
The first thing your company should do is ensure that everyone understands HIPAA. It’s not enough to have a general understanding. Everyone with access to confidential client information needs to understand what is meant by complying with HIPAA. Here are some things to know:
Beware of Disclosing Personally Identifiable Information: Your company must protect a patient’s name, date of birth, and home address. It’s also essential to ensure that biometric identifiers, social security numbers, or any other information that identifies patients aren’t disclosed.
Mental State: Don’t disclose anyone’s mental health situation whether past, present, or future.
Payment Information: HIPAA prohibits sharing payment information for care provided, whether past, present, or future. This is applicable if the information disclosed could be used to find the patient's identity.
Care Provided: It is against the rules to disclose any care provided to a patient.
There are also some administrative requirements that your company has to set up to comply with HIPAA. They include the following:
Privacy Official: Your company needs to assign a privacy official who’ll be tasked with creating and rolling out policies and processes.
Proper Training: It’s important that your company properly train workers, including people who are volunteering on the policies and processes.
Complaints Process: Your practice also needs to set up a process so people can complain about policies and processes.
Maintain Safeguards: It’s important to maintain proper physical, administrative, and technical protections to safeguard privacy.
Limit Fallout If Violations Detected: If your practice determines that policies or processes have been violated, it’s important to contain the harmful effects of that violation to the best of your ability.
How Tech Can Help With HIPAA Compliance
Healthcare or Education institutions have to follow guidelines to keep patient information confidential. This is laid out in the HIPAA standards. Software vendors cannot claim/guarantee "full compliance or certifications" with HIPAA but they can ensure their applications features and system architecture are built in to help maintain compliance. When video information comes into play, the technology you use must have strong encryption and user permissions.
Our VALT platform will give you the tools you need for your practice to maintain HIPAA-compliancy. IVS serves many different markets with our VALT platform. The use cases for video observation and recording may greatly differ. But one commonality between them all is the importance of data security and mandates to comply with specific regulations. For more information on VALT technical safeguards and their role in regulatory compliance click here.
You need software that offers specific compliance measures for your industry. HIPAA is the chief regulatory concern if you operate in the medical space. Businesses in the education space will be more concerned with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. This U.S. federal legislation safeguards the privacy of students’ personally identifiable information. This act binds any educational institution that receives federal funds.
Both FERPA and HIPAA are designed to protect the information of covered individuals and create mandates to prevent any unauthorized access to that information. Since many IVS customers are operating health clinics at postsecondary institutions open to the public with student practitioners, they are required to comply with FERPA concerning their students' education records, and with the HIPAA Privacy Rule with respect to the health records of their non-student patients.
Do You Want to Learn More About a Sofware Vendor’s Role in Compliance?
Regulatory compliance is a must. If you rely on applications to ensure your business operates efficiently and productively, you'll want to find a vendor that has that regulatory compliance baked into its software. Do you want to check us out for yourself? Request a demo to find out what we have to offer. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.