1.HIPAA Compliance
1.1 Introduction
Data privacy mandates and standards exist around the globe. These mandates and standards form the framework of protecting personal information as well as notifying the people once their personal information gets breached. Similar initiatives exist such as Secure Trust have much experience in assisting individuals on the best management practices to their data and hence avoid possible breaches. The actions also help people adopt and comply with the various compliance requirements in the process of protecting their personal information under complex environments. Data privacy compliance requirements must get met in full for comprehensive protection of personal information to occur through a proven methodology. The data privacy regulations exist in two forms; standard data regulations that work around the globe and the standard process which applies to particular regions as formulated. Some penalties apply in the instance of failure to meet the data compliance requirements by the concerned parties and which one has signed to comply. The penalties vary from one state or region to another with similar region-specific laws that prescribe the sanctions. In this paper, I will discuss HIPAA Compliance in detail as a service that helps a company or individual discover and also protects the sensitive data collected, transmitted, and retained to prevent a potential data breach.
1.2 Overview
By definition, HIPAA Compliance refers to the process in which business associates, as well as covered entities, must comply and observe to gain protection and security of Protected Health Information. The process and regulations are necessary to get followed get prescribed by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (Athanase, 2019). The primary purpose of the whole process is to keep the healthcare sensitive information of people, safe and secure as well as confidential. For HIPPA to work effectively, Protected Health Information(PHI) forms the most crucial aspect. Protected Health Information refers to any demographic data useful in the identification of a patient(client) of a HIPAA Covered Entity. The information includes names, addresses, financial data, phone numbers, among many more. PHI, as applies to HIPPA Compliance, forms the comprehensive healthcare data for everyone.
It also exists as the content which HIPPA works to protect and ensure its privacy. Further classification of PHI gets determined by the Safe Harbor Rule, which identifies the information to get removed. On the other hand, HIPAA Compliance also applies to organizations that carry out online surveys. Such organizations can own their data, manage their users, and simplifying while analyzing the information they collect online. On this note, HIPAA Compliant features to apply and help the customers safeguard the security of protected health information collected through the online surveys. Therefore, HIPAA sets the standards for protecting the sensitive electronic data of the patients, as its primary purpose. Similarly, companies and organizations that deal with PHI must have a physical, process, and network security measures that must get followed to ensure HIPAA Compliance.
1.3 Entities Covered by HIPAA Compliance
Covered entities refer to the individuals, processes, organizations, and companies that are bound to the HIAA Security Rule after adopting it. On this note, the HIPAA Security Rule applies to all the health plans and any provider of healthcare transmitting health data in electronic form through a transaction adopted under HIPAA (Groot, 2019). The Rule also extends to the health care clearinghouses as well as their business associates. Covered entities and business entities form the two major organizations that must be HIPPA compliant, as identified by the regulations of this Act. In simple terms, covered entities per HIPAA regulation are the organizations that collect, create, and transmits the PHI electronically. Business associates refer to an organization that encounters PHI in its operations as contracted to perform on behalf of the covered entity.
1.4 HIPAA Compliance Rules
HIPAA Compliance rules refer to the standards and thresholds that must get observed and met in the working process of HIPAA, as provided by this Act. In this case, different HIPAA rules make up a HIPAA regulation. These rules are subject to change to cater and accommodate the changes in the technology and circumstances attributed to time. All the provisions of HIPAA got passed and enacted 20 years ago since its establishment in 1996.HIPAA Privacy Rule forms a significant and essential rule that one would expect to come across in the whole process. The Rule is responsible for setting the national standards for the rights of the patients towards the PHI. However, the Rule only applies to the covered entities and not to the business associates.
The measures provided by this Rule include access to PHI by the patients, the right of the healthcare providers to deny access to PHI, use or disclosure, and many other provisions. HIPAA Security Rule forms another fundamental rule. The Rule sets the national standards for the secure transmission, maintenance, and handling of the PHI transmitted electronically. The Rule applies to both covered entities and the business associates for the reason of the potential sharing of electronic PHI. Integrity standards, safety, and physical administration of electronic PHI form the aspects the security rule focuses on. HIPAA Omnibus rule exists as another important HIPAA rule. The Rule got enacted to apply to extend HIPAA to the business associates from the covered entities (HHS.gov, 2013). The mandate of this Rule is that business associates must be compliant with HIPAA, and also it outlines the rules that apply to the agreements made by the business associates. The other HIPAA Rules include Self-audits, Remediation Plans, Policies/Procedures/Employee Training rule, Documentation, Business Associate Management, and the Incident Management rule.
1.4 The Importance of HIPAA Compliance.
HIPAA Compliance is vital to the health care providers and well as entities that deal with PHI n computerized operations. Computerized operations cover the digital physician order entry systems, laboratory systems pharmacy, radiology, and electronic health records (SurveyMonkey, 2020). The security rule provided by HIPAA Compliance helps protect the privacy of the patients’ health information and allows the covered entities at the same time to adopt new technologies hence improve the efficiency and quality of the patients’ care. The flexibility of the HIPAA Security Rule allows a covered entity to implement policies and techniques that suit its size and organizational structure. It also caters for possible risk to the patients and consumers of the electronic PHI, in the formulation of implementation of the policies and procedures (Owen, 2019). HIPAA Compliance helps to conduct online surveys that are ethical, safe, and accurate; hence an organization gets to run smoothly.
It also helps the customers of online survey enterprises feel confident when their surveys comply with HIPAA Compliance. With HIPAA Compliant covered entities, it becomes easier for the business associates to get on board using the HIPAA Compliant features. Act compliance help improve the performance of a health organization by collecting feedback from the patients in a secure manner. It also limits the risk of PHI breaches when collecting patients’ registration data. Surveys get conducted discreetly and confidently. Medical research gets simplified with pre-populated questions. With encryptions, studies done with mobile devices have reduced risks of data breaches. The data collected by HIPAA Compliant survey organizations are reliable for healthcare accreditation.
1.5 HIPAA Violation
It refers to a breach of any kind in an organization’s compliance program compromising the integrity of PHI and its contents (PETTERS, 2020). HIPAA violation is however different form data violation as HIPAA violation only relates to the breaches that result from incompleteness, ineffectiveness or HIPAA Compliance program that is outdated
- Annotated Reference List
Article 1
The article in this context goes by the title, what is HIPAA Compliance? The material is written by Owen and posted on Otava.com. The article about the HIPAA Compliance may get obtained by clicking on the link: https://www.otava.com/reference/what-is-hipaa-compliance/.
The article stipulates that HIPAA forms a set of standards that protect sensitive information about a patient. Security measures are put into place and meant to get followed precisely by any organization dealing with PHI as a mandatory requirement. Hosting of data with a HIPAA Compliant Hosting provider entails certain technical compulsory and administrative safeguards as per the US government. In the US, the Department of Health and Human Services exists as the body that enacts and ensures the HIPAA Compliance by the concerned organizations. This body insists that the physical and technical safeguards form the most relevant aspects that are provided by the HIPAA Compliant hosts.
Similarly, these aspects constitute a data center of HIPAA Compliance. The others include technical policies as well as Network/transmission/security safeguards. According to the US Department of health and human services, HIPAA Compliant cloud hosting ensures that data contained in the cloud exists according to the provisions of the federal law.
This article provides updates on the launched HIPAA Compliance, which is ideal for the executives as well as the decision-making team in IT matters. It also contains substantial information helpful in identifying the best practices and recommendations to the best cloud-based HIPAA Compliant technology. By providing information on the clod-based Compliance, the relevant information required by an interested IT technology-based party on HIPAA Compliance finds a smooth process of adopting the Act. Therefore, in my opinion, this article is of relevance in use. To the already HIPAA compliance entities since it contains information about the rules and regulations HIPAA Compliance operated within, thus fostering understanding of the same.
Article 2
The article referred in this context also focuses on explaining the meaning of HIPAA Compliance and the related information as a 2020 guide checklist. Jeff Peters writes the material in 2020. Jeff mentions that HIPAA fines in 2018 cost ten companies a lump sum of more than 28 million dollars. On the same note, it gets attributed to the 25900 cases of HIPAA violations and in which only ten got resolved. Relatively there are provisions provided by the article that need to get followed to prevent such loss of monetary resources by organizations. The report provides a guide of what one needs to know about the Act to help one secure his/her HIPAA protected data. The article covers an explanation about what PHI entails and covers the covered entities, business associates’ meaning, the HIPAA privacy rule, as well as to whom the Rule applies. The article may get obtained from the following link; https://www.varonis.com/blog/hipaa-compliance/
The values in dollars about the losses made by companies concerning HIPAA violations in this article brings the point on board on the importance of observing the security rules provided by HIPAA. They also give an immediate sense of seriousness and the extent of the penalties associated with its s violations. In this way, the articles become much essential and relevant to organizations covered by HIPAA Compliance, encouraging more observation on the rules to avoid incurring such losses through a violation of the same. I, therefore, recommend this article to the already HIPAA Compliance entities and business associates as a matter of learning from the experiences of others.
Article 3
The article “HIPAA compliance at SurveyMonkey” is focusing on the application of HIPAA Compliance in online surveys, located on the link:
According to this article, SurveyMonkey occurs in organizations to enable the creation of polls, allowing an organization to own its data and in managing its users. The SurveyMonkey gets carried out effectively in conjunction with HIPAA Compliance features, which work to safeguard the PHI collected through the online surveys. These features are made available to the customers concerned in these online surveys. On the importance of HIPAA Compliance, organizations bound to it work smoothly in the process of taking the provisions seriously to avoid the substantial penalties by the federal laws upon violation. SurveyMonkey is a business associate that meets the requirements of HIPAA and a fact that makes it easy to get onboarded as a business associate by the covered entities. As a business associate, SurveyMonkey operates by a standard of Business Associate Agreement, which the customers can view and sign quickly online. The online surveys carried out by the different HIPAA Compliance covered entities are for different purposes as outline by this article.
The article provides useful information on the ways to conduct online surveys while complying with HIPAA provisions for the security of the data collected and analyzed. Importantly one gets to understand the new application of HIPAA Compliance in the patients’ information transmitted electronically, and therefore teaching us HIPAA Compliance does not only apply to the patient’s pater record only. It also provides substantial information on how to adopt the HIPAA Compliance when dealing with PHI electronically as well as the necessary measures needed before doing so. In this way, the importance of the Act in the safeguarding and protection of patient’s information online gets learned. I recommend the article as a useful piece of information to the organization dealing in online surveys and handling the electronic PHI.
Article 4
This article seeks to explain the meaning of HIPAA Compliance as well as the requirement as per the title. Juliana De Groot wrote it in 2019. The author gives a complete and detailed definition of HIPAA Compliance, also as a set of patients’ sensitive information protection standards. Regarding the US, the privacy standards provided in HIPAA Compliance establishes national standards that protect specific individuals’ health information. The link that contains this article is; https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-hipaa-compliance The HIPAA security rules in this context creates a national set of security standards to protect the privacy of health information transmitted through electronic means. According to the authorship, privacy rules address the technical and non-technical safeguard of the covered entities, which operates from the security rules provided by HIPAA security rules. The need for the Act compliance also gets well covered by this article. All computerized operations dealing with PHI form the electronic patients’ private information, which needs protection by the HIPAA Compliance polices. Health care providers and concerned entities need to observe the provisions of this Act.
In my perspective, this article provides an understanding of the reasons as to why HIPAA Compliance matters and the need to adopt it when dealing with patients’ information using computers and other related devices like mobile phones. The author introduces a new concept that HIPAA privacy differs from HIPAA security rules and shows how the two finally becomes dependent on each other. There is a comprehensive and detailed explanation of the safeguards broken down into physical, technical, and other safeguard policies. it helps the reader understand the relevance and principle of each as well as their implications in the whole working process of HIPAA Compliance.
Article 5
This article is about Health Information Privacy by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The material is located in the following link; https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/security/laws-regulations/index.html The article gives a brief history of HIPAA which git enacted in the year 1996. It got passed following the necessity of the US Health and Human Services Department secretary to develop regulations for protecting certain health information. Therefore, it forced HHS to publish the HIPAA Privacy Rule and, consequently, the HIPAA Security Rule. The two covered identifiable health information as well as the electronic protected Health Information. The Civil Rights Office got the mandate of enforcing both the privacy and security rules. The Compliance by then was voluntary; however, with civil money penalties upon violation.
This article informs and makes us understand the origin of the HIPAA Compliance, and in that way, we get to understand the reasons for its adoption. We understand the need for the enactment of this Act and the difference it makes when adopted about the privacy of our healthcare data. The article, therefore, is of great importance and relevance in enhancing the HIPAA Compliance knowledge based on past accounts of events. Since the Compliance of the Act was voluntary by its enactment, the article makes us understand the aspects of freedoms and rights that are entitled to the individual and entities covered.
Article 6
Located in the following link; https://compliancy-group.com/what-is-hipaa-compliance/, this article explains the meaning of HIPAA Compliance by providing a brief history. According to this article, the Office for Civil Rights(OCR) forms the statutory body that regulates the adoption of HIPAA as directed by the Department of Health and Human Services. There are common HIPAA Violations that affect health care. OCR, in this regard, maintains the Compliance of the Act by investigating the new issues occurring frequently. The statutory body works through a series of interlocking Regulatory rules operating in the form of routine guidance.
In my understanding, the article teaches us that HIPAA Compliance occurs as a culture, necessary, and vital to healthcare organizations. It becomes impossible for the operations of healthcare organizations to happen smoothly. It is since organizations deal with sensitive health information that needs to get protected. The article makes us understand that similarly, other related businesses that deal with patients’ data must implement and adopt HIPAA compliance. HIPAA Compliance forms a tool that helps instill confidence and guarantee the patients that their information on health remains confidential.