Significance of Complying with HIPAA and HITECH ACT

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act or the HITECH Act is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). ARRA contains incentives related to health care information technology in general and contains specific incentives designed to accelerate the adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems among providers.

This legislation anticipates a substantial expansion in the exchange of electronic protected health information (ePHI), the HITECH ACT also widens the scope of privacy and security protections available under HIPAA as it increases the potential legal liability for non-compliance and it provides for more enforcement.

Significance of HIPAA

Better known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA law was initiated to achieve consumer protection in 1996. The law caters to the multitude of problems that are often faced by patients when seeking medical treatment at the various healthcare units. To ensure an all encompassing public welfare and healthcare compliance, the American administration has devised HIPAA. Besides offering safeguard to customers from theft, financial scams, fake transactions, HIPAA also prevents exploitation or injustice done to customers while they are opting for healthcare facilities or for certain policies.

HIPAA basically maintains a track record of one’s social security number, date of birth, address of correspondence and information regarding healthcare. It documents all the preceding case histories of illness and the various kinds of treatment that was offered to the patient at that point of time. There is also an account of the expenses that were incurred apart from this.

A personal healthcare record needs to be maintained as a typical situation at healthcare centers and hospitals is that a single patient is often diagnosed by more than one doctor. The data cataloguing techniques are getting altered every alternate day with advancement in technology. Files must exist in a methodical fashion to circumvent confusion as the case history of a patient gets circulated from one medical department to another. HIPAA might not be able to help you safeguard your interests, if your previous personal treatment details do not come in handy.

The Importance of Complying with the HITECH Act

The HITECH ACT took effect in 2010, though it was signed in 2009. HITECH encourages the adoption and meaningful use of technology pertaining to health information. It strengthens civil and criminal enforcement of the existing HIPAA rules and regulations and for those not dealing with the electronic transmission of health information properly; HITECH Act paves the road for serious consequences

Monetary fines under the HITECH Act are structured on levels which escalate in proportion to the violations by the offender. Based on the nature and the extent of the violation and the nature and the extent of the harm resulting from the violation, the penalties are decided. The penalties are decided based on the nature and the extent of the violation and the nature and the extent of the harm resulting from the violation.  The reputation of the company can also be seriously hampered besides the monetary loss.

A company can ensure compliance by either hiring an attorney to help guide you through the compliance or have a consultant visit your facility or purchase software other such compliance tools to guide you through the process. Irrespective of what is chosen it is vital to ensure that staff dealing with patients or clients is trained in a uniform, facility specific, HIPAA compliance procedure. Although cumbersome, taking the time and making the investment to insure HIPAA and hitech compliance has its dividends if the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Justice ever decides to pay a visit.

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Compliance Solutions for Positive Transitions in Healthcare

The hard-hitting healthcare compliance regulations have blurred the future of many thriving and reputed organizations due to their errant attitudes. The US health law has been extremely punishing on all entities accused of violating HIPAA and HITECH acts with bleak chances of revival. Pushing the penalty limits to millions of dollars only reiterates the stand that the judiciary has taken to wipe out all nefarious activities and provide safety to patients.

Handling multiple networks in a massive organization is a wearisome task owing to the faulty management mechanisms, an unresponsive, unaware or ill-trained group of employees and a derelict IT infrastructure that is presumably the major support of the organization. A conscientious and enthusiastic attitude towards preservation of personal health information is expected from the health providers. The imposition of expensive fines has not been a lesson good enough as can be seen by the spate of recurring accidents and intentional incidents exposed every now and then.

Suppressing and ignoring security loopholes existing in an organization is an ominous situation eventually leading to far more lethal and destructive outcomes. With the law tightening its grip on negligent behavior the healthcare providers can be at a greater loss than bargained for. On the contrary if the healthcare providers spare some time to analyze and combine efforts to fox all attempts responsible for security breaches, it will manifest in more productive results.

The SecureGRC SB is a solution that has been created to tackle all security issues effectively with no opportunities for errors or misguided advice. This is a cloud service that offers 24 hours real-time information regarding the compliance status of an organization and the latest regulations in use. These are automated processes that are deployed to update the existing policies of the organizations without any manual intervention thus setting off a systematic and uninterrupted functioning of the process.

The SecureGRC SB has a superior infrastructure with flexible and integrating features that makes it easy to adapt to any IT compliance regulation. Thus there is a good control over all the compliance policies. The HITECH compliance act has mandatory considerations for business associates especially, as they have been identified as one of the major reasons for security breaches.  

The cloud based IT healthcare compliance solution is a unified solution that has the ability to track and monitor all the activities of business associates. The solution is extremely affordable, thus making security an achievable responsibility, even in smaller organizations where budget constraints are often quoted as the main reason for lacking security measures. With such a compelling security solution available all foul play can be totally barred from causing any damage. 

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Advantages of SaaS-Based IT Security and Compliance Solution

Organizations are under constant vigilance of government bodies for their extent of compliance with industry regulations. IT security compliance issues have created a demand for several such regulations including HIPAA, SOX, and GLBA. Non compliance with these regulatory standards attracts heavy penalties. Therefore every enterprise including small and mid-sized ones, have to employ robust solutions to maintain tight security over their IT infrastructure. These compliance regulations are complex in nature and hence it is very difficult to maintain a cohesive system of discovering, monitoring and reporting security status. This results in wastage of time and added costs.

However, SaaS-based compliance management software solutions have come to the rescue of businesses that face challenges in IT compliance and security. These solutions provide several benefits while also fulfilling governance risk and compliance needs in an integrated and unified manner. SaaS-based IT compliance solutions use automated processes which align security compliance practices with the organization’s governance system. So, organizations can now have complete visibility of their compliance status and manage their data center, network and security with a single integrated framework.

Advantages of SaaS-Based Compliance Management Solutions

• These solutions are simple and help reduce the time needed for regulatory compliance and certification processes. An end-to-end automated process is employed to meet the demands of security, compliance, audit and risk management needs.
• They have a flexible infrastructure with a built-in support system for various compliance regulations like SOX, ISO, COBiT, PCI, HIPAA etc.
• These solutions require very low investments but can generate high returns, which make them an ideal platform for all small and medium-sized businesses.
• They can be easily deployed as they are web-enabled and run on multiple web browsers and running on any operating system, providing continuous updates.
• All specific and sensitive customer data are protected on a multi-tenanted architecture with the help of advanced and secure technologies.
• It reduces the total cost of ownership thus making it highly cost-effective.
• Automated processes handle workflow easily along with document management, inventory controls, compliance scanning and easy access control through a web interface that is highly secure.
• They also provide exhaustive audit logs for all actions that are relevant to the compliance process.

Merely employing technological methods is not enough to build a secure IT GRC environment. Success depends on evolving appropriate IT security policies and how these technologies are implemented and managed to produce the most emphatic results. Harnessing the IT environment for achieving business objectives, and managing financial, strategic and operational risks efficiently determine the worth of the compliance system. SaaS-based compliance management software can handle all these complex procedures and create a congenial environment for secure IT governance.

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Can threat management solutions provide for best compliance management as well?

Security threats are only turning more vicious and sophisticated every day. All enterprises today worry for the safety of their data and network; therefore security has become a prime concern. From losing sensitive data about the company to actual revenue loss as well as image of the enterprise, security threats can tamper with a company in many ways. So in order to survive in the global market, enterprises need to address these threats effectively. With plenty of security solutions available enterprises are struggling to figure out which solution would work best for their enterprise and also work as the best defense against security threats of any kind.

Don’t just get a threat management solution that ignores compliance!

Enterprises prefer a threat management solution that involves installing firewalls, anti-virus systems, anti-spyware and other intrusion detection systems. The onus of such a solution’s actual effectiveness lies in its ability to manage and monitor threats automatically and constantly, which it is unable to efficiently deliver. So it would be sensible to opt for solution that can ably manage, monitor, report and take action on threats as well assist in compliance management software. So apart from providing you with abilities to detect threats constantly, it can also address and adapt to the ever-changing regulatory and compliance landscape. Therefore while choosing a threat management solution caution must be exercised because an erroneous choice could you’re your enterprise with several problems.

Get the 2 fold benefit

The perfect threat and compliance management solution would provide these benefits:

• Solve security issues ranging from insider threats to malware analysis
• Reduce compliance processes costs
• Achieve easy compliance irrespective of location and time constraints
• Achieve easy monitoring with an integrated dashboard ensuring optimized IT GRC
• Offer automatic end-to-end full enterprise security
• Cater to compliance and risk management needs
• Present a comprehensive audit trail for all compliance needs
• Identify and report violations immediately
• Real Time reporting
• Identify vulnerabilities and Vulnerability Scanning
• Mitigate these vulnerabilities

To manage security in-house can be a costly and complex affair, owing to the complications involved. Therefore instead of increasing your security budgets, it would be prudent to opt for a solution that increases the security efficiency for your enterprise and also effectively makes threat and IT compliance management a simple task. Don’t let your security issues be the Achilles’ heel for your enterprise’s growth and success! Choose wisely and act now! 

Get more information on HIPAA compliance and HIPAA here. 

Steer Clear of HIPAA Crackdown

When the department of ‘Health and Human Services’ office for civil rights imposes the first ever civil penalties for violation of the HIPAA privacy rule, it is no wonder then that even legal experts are warning medical practitioners of heeding to HIPAA compliance requirements down to the last detail. The penalties of $4.3 million and $1 million were just the drastic measures for small time healthcare providers to wake up and take HIPAA enforcement seriously. With the OCR reacting to breaches seriously, there are indications of more fines and lawsuits in case of compliance, risk assessments and incident planning failures. 

From failure in providing medical records to patients, to being careless about medical records, all such compliance failures can prove costly for healthcare providers. HIPAA enforcement asks for every covered healthcare provider to responsibly protect their patients’ health information. Such providers need to understand that the OCR is unwilling to accept human errors as excuses for non-compliance.

Especially, small health care providers and practices should ensure that they are fully HIPAA HITECH compliant and in order to do that, they need to put in place the right infrastructure and effective and economical solutions. Most of such small medical practices face problems when it comes to processing, storing or handling personal health information. They are unable to manage the high costs of setting up IT controls and maintaining ongoing sustainability. What such small medical providers need is an inexpensive, yet efficient solution that meets all their compliance requirements. 

This is where SecureGRC from eGestalt can be a great answer to the compliance woes of such small medical practices. SecureGRC can assist in identifying, remediating and maintaining HIPAA and HITECH compliance for such healthcare providers. This unified security monitoring solution understands your concerns pertaining to HIPAA and HITECH compliance and comes with the added advantage of being delivered as a cloud service. This ensures that it is always up to date with the latest versions and revisions of healthcare compliance regulations as well. A patent pending solution, SecureGRC is a multiple award winning solution that has been designed keeping the small healthcare provider in mind. 

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Another Smear added to the hall of shame

Every now and then medical negligence and non-compliance reports rears its ugly face causing traumatic repercussions that shakes the basic foundations of any establishment. This time it has resurfaced again. The victim is Health Net, a health insurance company that has been penalized with a massive amount of $250,000 for compromising with patients’ personal health information due to a missing drive.

This incident adds to the rising number of breaches and totals to 256 incidents affecting 10.2 million patients. It is also the first one to be marked in history as a HIPAA civil lawsuit filed by a state attorney general enabled by the HITECH Act. This is the second time that Health Net has been charged with breach of personal health information.

It is a bewildering to note that the institutions associated with the medical profession, fail to understand the emphasis on enforcements to control the physical security parameters, the existing policies and their business associates despite clear instructions from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

It can be considered a willing negligence on the company’s part to rely on flimsy third party policy structures for safeguarding patients’ confidential information, especially with this being the second incidence of negligence. As the HIPAA HITECH laws are become more exacting there seems to be barely any improvements. 

There is still hope for healthcare organizations to recover their practices from further deterioration by implementing the cloud based compliance management software solutions. This compliance system traces all malignant attacks meant to paralyze the normal functions of the business. It provides the most recent information with real-time updates. Its unique feature is its intense visibility into the status of the compliance processes.

The processes are automated and follow a streamlined path without deviating from its course. There is a lot of integration and coordination involved which makes it easy to secure the security loopholes and construct a resilient defensive mechanism. It becomes easy to track and monitor the activities of the business associates to ensure that they are in adherence with the metrics. Due to automatic updating procedures the existing policies are continually amended and kept in sync with the latest policies and procedures. 

Organizations have also attributed their weak security to incompatible infrastructure. With the cloud based healthcare compliance system there is no need for any investments in new infrastructure and therefore deals with the age-old grouse of incompatible infrastructure in the healthcare organizations.

Organizations can put an end to their distress by employing the cost-saving and amiable cloud-based HITECH compliance management solution and grab the attention of the HHS and OCR in a positive light.

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Ultimate Compliance Solutions to End the Sufferings of Healthcare Facilities

In the past it has been discovered that those undergoing recuperation in healthcare organizations were liable to more life-threatening risks unknown to them other than their illnesses. The callous attitudes of the healthcare personnel and an indifferent perspective in the healthcare management’s attitude have wrecked many lives and jeopardized patients’ lives by losing or misplacing their personal health information, or through intentional pilferage.

It was apparent that the rampant misuse of patients’ records would lead to discontent and demand for better and secure measures to protect the rights of the patients. Thus severe penalties were imposed on errant individuals and facilities that failed to comply with the healthcare compliance regulations. The initiation of such strict penalties was meant for instilling awareness and awakening amongst those providing medical services rather than making deliberate attempts to taint their reputations and confiscate their right to work.

Some recent incidents have exposed the inefficiency of healthcare organizations to maintain a system to check such irregularities. Either the employees have not been trained aptly and sufficiently to differentiate what is tolerable under the compliance norms and what is not or they have willfully violated the regulations out of desperation or malice. Irrespective of the reasons such willful violation acts have instigated a furor and have cast a negative light on the integrity of the organizations.

If the healthcare organizations want to fix any loopholes in their systems before it leads to a disastrous end they need to employ compliance management software that can provide answers for all persistent issues. The system should employ methods that can help in gauging any anticipatory threats and suggest remediation methods to avert the situation and committing a serious offence. 

SecureGRC SB is an on-demand cloud based service that provides real-time information so that organizations are always aware of their compliance status. The solution provides high visibility and accountability providing the facility to make amendments on time and avoiding any non-compliance occurrence. The solution is flexible and easy to use with automatic updating features. Organizations are also saved from the worry of investing in new infrastructure and this works advantageously for the small medical practices too. 

Healthcare organizations cannot have control on the intentions and behavior of their employees. The SecureGRC SB is the solution for all healthcare regulatory compliance issues that usually plague medical facilities. With the web-based compliance healthcare management solutions medical organizations can also steer clear of controversies and forfeiture of status.

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A Crusade for Enforcement of Healthcare Compliance Principles

Healthcare organizations are perpetually under rigorous screening with the enactment of HIPAA and HITECH laws meant for checking health care data breaches and privacy violations. These organizations have become hapless victims due to staff malpractices and negligence followed by severe consequences. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have been seriously pursuing organizations that have shown a lax attitude towards regulations compliance.

Organizations that is unable to control their information security systems are being severely pulled up by the HHS and OCR, awarding expensive penalties and negative publicity for non-compliance. With the HHS and OCR breathing down their necks the healthcare providers are trapped in a state of discomfort and stress. Besides the concern of staff indulging in malpractices, these organizations have several other issues that restrain them from fulfilling the compliance regulations.

IT has a key role in administering best policies that are in alignment with the compliance laws. With a barrage of compliance regulations to adhere to, the healthcare organizations are at a loss as they do not have the right infrastructure to deal with the new and revised regulations, and neither do they have the budget to invest in a new infrastructure. This creates confusion and complicates the entire process thereby leading to mismanagement and unintentional negligence. 

If the organizations want to put an end to their misery they need to revamp their outdated methods of providing protection to patients’ records. Revamping does not always mean purchasing new infrastructure. There are solutions available that can be fitted into the existing system without causing any concerns either in execution or in costs. These solutions are offered as cloud based services with integrating capabilities and provides for a cost-effective and highly compatible IT healthcare compliance management system.

With the cloud-based solution organizations can get real-time information and updates on the compliance status of their organization and can make automatic changes in their existing policies accordingly without the fear of overlooking any recent regulations. The solution also provides for managing laws governing business associates. It keeps a track of the activities of the business associates and provides accurate reports. 

The web-based solutions have been especially designed to tackle all healthcare compliance issues. This cost-saving method is the best solution that delivers powerful, effective and realistic results. Even the small medical practices can extract benefits from this solution and be saved from damages.

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Small Medical practices can manage HIPAA compliance regulations

Small Medical Practices (SMP) are still coming to terms with understanding security, though some medical practitioners hire compliance consultants or IT managers to handle the regulatory requirements them. Some don’t get what’s the big deal about security, and a few others are under the false impression that such measures are only necessary for the bigger players in the medical field. With almost zero in-house security expertise to guide and help them, most SMPs have an uphill task ahead for them as far as healthcare compliance measures are concerned. There are quite a few instances where SMP’s feel that as long as they have installed firewalls and put in antivirus, their work is done. But such miniscule measures are clearly not enough. 

Some SMP’s realize that both HIPAA and HITECH regulations must be adhered to; the constant worry is on costs associated with complying as per these regulations and protecting information. So the answer lies not in ignoring healthcare regulatory compliance requirements but by dealing with them smartly. SMP’s need to comprehend that abiding as per the HIPAA compliance measures can actually protect their credibility and their image. They also need to understand with the right technology and controls in place, managing compliance and security are not cumbersome procedures. SMP’s should wisely invest in such automated technologies and solutions that can ably support compliance and governance easily. Also the solution should be inherently a solution that can be enforced easily, swiftly adapting to different security requirements. The idea is to get a solution that can align with your goals and also protect patient health information easily. 

SMP’s need to perhaps, change their mindset a little, when it comes to spending on compliance measures; they need to think of this investment as a measure of protecting precious and confidential patient health information and as a measure of providing better quality healthcare to their patients. The solutions should also allow SMP’s to implement and enforce security policies correctly. SMP’s should also be prudent to opt for an automated compliance solution that is scalable and also be sophisticated enough to be able to monitor the security controls effectively. An ideal compliance solution should provide SMP’s with an integral framework that can guide medical professionals on how to respond to security threats and vulnerabilities in an efficient and consistent way. 

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Saying No to Health Breaches

A recent federal list announced that there have been serious health information breaches that affected nearly 8.3 million people since September 2009. With 3 government agencies looking into Heath Net breaches including the case of 9 missing server drives from a California data center that was managed by IBM, the actual gravity of the situation cannot be stressed enough. The Office of Civil Rights that generally adds such breaches to its official list upon confirmation of details has not yet added the Health Net breaches. As per the final version of the breach notification rule, all breaches affecting 500 individuals or more should be reported to OCR including the people who are affected by the breach and this should be done within 60 days. 

Over 50% of the major health breaches that have been reported, most of them are concerned with either the loss or the theft of computer devices. This has underlined the need to install encryption security methods to laptops etc. On the other hand the Health Net breach incidents are more focused on ways and means to protect storage media effectively. The OCR is doing its best to get all healthcare providers to abide as per HIPAA / HITECH compliance requirements; in fact it has even requested for increased funding to ensure enhanced enforcement efforts. But the fact still remains that the onus to meet all the HIPAA compliance measures still rests on the healthcare providers themselves. There is likely to be an addition to the HITECH breach notification rule sometime later this year, which would ensure that all doubts about what kind of security breaches should be reported are all simplified and laid out clearly. 

Recently Cignet Health and Massachusetts General Hospital were slapped with severe penalties. Such increasing incidences of security breaches are indeed alarming; small businesses need to equip themselves with a solution that can help them address such breaches efficiently. SecureGRC SB, a solution that is provided on the cloud, can fulfill all HIPAA / HITECH compliance requirements pertaining to small businesses. With its central repository for all documentation purposes pertaining to HIPAA, it can send reminders to ensure compliance regulations are maintained and can ensure complete maintenance of track records of business associates. 

More often than not, small medical healthcare providers cannot meet the expense of costly solutions nor can they obviously pay the hefty penalties for any non-compliance issues. The best option for such businesses is to opt for a unique IT healthcare compliance solution that is not only economical, and accurate, but also assists them in meeting all the healthcare compliance requirements efficiently. And with SecureGRC SB, small healthcare providers can easily say an emphatic no to health breaches!

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