HIPAA Compliance For Your Business
Businesses that deal with client's medical data have to be HIPAA compliant which requires keeping patient's information and files private. These companies have to follow a set or requirements including encryption, policies and procedures, network security guidelines, and restrictions to physical access to data.
St. Louis Managed IT can help your business set up a standard procedure to ensure your patient's files are held to HIPAA's requirements. Our professionals can assess your current standards, identify any holes in your procedure, recommend changes to your IT environment, set up a portal for all of your HIPAA information, and hold an annual assessment of these best practices to make sure everything is being compliant.
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St. Louis Managed IT will work with your company to become HIPAA compliant for your patients. Throughout working together, our IT professionals can work onsite to help set up a standard practice for dealing with files in a compliant fashion. Once these procedures are set up, a HIPAA Seal of Compliance Verification is awarded as the industry standard to medical practices that are HIPAA compliant.
A medical practice not using HIPAA compliant procedures can be subject to substantial fines.
Encryption
Making sure any data is encrypted can help keep your patient's files HIPAA compliant. This includes using BitLocker on desktops and servers, using encryption on any backup data both onsite and offsite, and ensuring any communication applications are secure and encrypted.
Policies and Procedures
Having policies and procedures in place to ensure all HIPAA compliance is managed correctly is imperative. Those policies and procedures can help to determine who is responsible for different parts of the HIPAA compliance process.
- Policies to determine how the company will manage files (like ePHI data)
- Procedures in place to enforce these policies (like receiving the data, who gets access to the data, and ensuring the data is secure)
For example:
When an employee is terminated, what policies are followed in the termination and what procedures are in place to ensure their access is removed quickly.
Network Security
Network security includes:
- Monitoring and Logging: tracking authentication attempts and sending alerts to multiple failed attempts
- Group Policy: this can be used to restrict certain elements of the device like screensaver settings, accesses, and which devices can and cannot be plugged into a computer
- Restricting Access: providing employees access to programs that they need to accomplish their jobs and nothing else
Physical Access to Data
HIPAA compliance also refers to physical documents, not just digital ones. So making sure you have a sign in sheet to track visitors and locked files to printed documents. Desktops should have screen shades so visitors can't read what is on their computers and desktops should be locked when an employee walks away from their computer.
St. Louis Managed IT can provide both on-site and online guidelines for your company to follow in order to receive your HIPAA Seal of Compliance Verification.
A medical practice not using HIPAA compliant procedures can be subject to substantial fines.