Any organization that is related to protected health information (PHI) has to ensure that it has apt security measures to meet the HIPAA compliance requirements. HIPAA compliance does not limit health care organizations. It extends to services providers and subcontractors that have access to the public information. If the data is hosted by a service provider the provider should also be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Here is an insight in the HIPAA compliance issues that you need to consider while hiring a cloud hosting provider as part of your compliance strategy.
Core Considerations-
The base of Online HIPAA Certification lies in maintaining the privacy and security of the electronic medical records. The HIPAA privacy rules and Security rules require an organization to present safety measures to protect the ePHI. The same applies to the hosting companies, the specific requirements are as follows:
: ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all the data that has been created, received. Maintained or transmitted.
: check the areas of risks to the security of the information
: provide protection against impermissible use or disclosure of data
: assure that the workforce of the organization also complies to security policies.
Thus it can be concluded that data confidentiality is maintained and the data is not tempered or destroyed, data risk management and assurance that the employees are security aware.
HIPAA is different to different organizations and some alterations are required to make it suitable for your organization. Depending on the size, resource and business HIPAA should be adapted. However it is basic that organizations adapt the following principles:
: assess the potential risks.
: adopt the apt security measure
: document the selected security measure
: maintain reasonable and apt security protections.
Importance of HIPAA compliant hosting company:
With the help of HIPAA compliant hosting company you can deal with the privacy and security requirements in the following ways:
: the data that has to be stored in utmost security is not shared with others systems or apps. Also the technology stack in the cloud provider’s environment is also HIPAA compliant.
: a dedicated hosting system assures that the platform keeps the data separate and secure than a shared hosting environment. It protects you from the risk or security due to a shared environment with the help of HIPAA Risk Analysis.
: the location of the servers is clear therefore the environment keeps your data assembled and maintains its safety and security.
: the HIPAA compliant hosting provider must meet the same or more compliance requirements thus they can help you to be compliant.
Basics of HIPAA compliant hosting providers:
HIPAA states that hosting providers need to meet the administrative, physical and technical requirements. Thus the hosting provider should meet the following requirements:
: safeguards regarding the transfer, removal and storage of data.
: audit reports should be detailed to show who has assessed the data, when and where it was assessed and what data was assessed.
: it has to assure that the data has not been tampered with.
: assure during transmission the data has been encrypted.
