With greater technological advances comes greater responsibility. In an age in which businesses must now find ways to protect their data both online and off, it is now more vital than ever that businesses of all kinds, especially those in heavily regulated industries, have a plan in place to protect against things like data breaches, cyber attacks, and the like.
While the HIPAA privacy rule is widely known in the medical industry, its rules regarding data management can be difficult to decipher and apply. To help you organize your data management processes to remain in compliance with the HIPAA privacy rule, we’ve outlined the major rules and regulations affecting data management, as well as ways to ensure your protected data remains safe at all times.
To whom does the rule apply?
There are two categories to pay attention to: covered entities and business associates. In broad terms, covered entities are made up of health care clearinghouses, any healthcare provider who shares health information in electronic form to covered entities, and health plans (ie insurance companies, etc). Covered entities are required to remain in compliance with the HIPAA privacy rule.
Many covered entities work with other businesses and services in order to operate and may disclose protected health information to these “business associates.” These business associates often come in the form of practice management, accounting, data management and more — making it important that covered entities familiarize themselves with the requirements for themselves and their business associates.
Whether you decide to manage your data internally or via a business associate who provides data management services, such as cloud backup, server virtualization and more, you’ll need to be aware of the requirements that must be met to remain HIPAA compliant.
Documentation and Record Retention
Under the privacy rule, each covered entity is required to maintain their privacy policies, procedures, instances of complaints, and other pertinent actions for a period of no less than 6 years. This means that every business is required to keep extensive records in regards to their privacy policy in the event that something unfortunate occurs and must be looked into.
Your state may also require that you retain patient medical record for a certain span of time. These retention lengths vary state by state, ranging from 3 years from the initial visit, to 30 years after the patient’s last visit, to the lifetime of the patient. You can check your state’s specific rules here. Knowing this will allow you to create a data retention and archiving plan that includes cloud backup so records can be recovered despite any data disaster.
Business Associate Contracts
If you outsource your data management and document retention needs to a service provider, like the ones listed above, you’ll need to have them sign a business associate contract. These agreements outline how the protected health information will be used by the business associate, what uses are permitted, mandate that uses may not exceed what has been permitted unless required by law, and require the business associate implement proper safeguards to prevent improper use or disclosure of the protected data.
You can find a sample business associate agreement here.
Data Safeguards
One of the top ways in which data management is affected by the HIPAA privacy rule lies in the matter of data safeguards. Each business or covered entity must maintain the appropriate safeguards necessary to ward off unpredictable issues such as the unintentional disclosure of sensitive data. This includes making sure data is properly stored and protected, and properly disposed of once it’s no longer needed.
Some data physical and technical safeguards covered entities and business associates should implement include:
- End-to-end data encryption – data is encrypted and rendered unreadable even during transit
- Anti-virus softwares and protections – to keep viruses, like cryptoware, from stealing your data and holding it hostage
- Cloud backup with unlimited previous file version histories – so that any accidentally deleted information can be recovered from any point in time and restored — keeping you in compliance with your state’s record retention requirements no matter what the disaster. This also function can also allow data to be recovered even if it’s been hijacked by an encryption virus.
- Heavily secured data centers – thefts and hacks happen to businesses of all sizes. If you’re storing your data on-site or with a business associate, like a cloud backup provider, make sure they are implementing top of the line security measures like multiple levels of access control, including alarms, armed guards, video surveillance, gated perimeter, locked server cabinets, security checkpoints, uninterruptible power supplies, diesel backup power generators, redundant cooling and multiple redundant gigabit internet connections.
Data Management Providers
As you consider internal data management or search for service providers who can manage your data for you, it’s important to consider these elements of compliance. Any service provider who manages your data should be more than willing to sign a BAC and should have an understanding of the required data safeguards.
In addition, they should help you meet your retention lengths and be able to recover records for you in the event something goes missing.
Cloud backup is a great data management option for covered entities looking to provide the best physical, technical and administrative safeguards to their data.
Nordic Backup offers automatic, continuous cloud backup so every file change is saved and can be recovered as needed and so you never forget to run a backup, putting you out of compliance with your state’s regulations if a document goes missing. In addition, we offer end-to-end encryption, military grade security, signed Business Associate Contracts, and much more,
When it comes to HIPAA regulations and managing protected data, never be caught off guard. By taking the proper precautions to ensure your business and data are protected, you will potentially save your business from an array of complications in regards to data management.
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