Posted 5 years ago      Author: Stephen

If you’re new to the health care industry, or you’ve just been meaning to check and update your procedures to ensure you’re compliant with HIPAA, we’ve put together a quick rundown to help you get there!

If you’d rather jump directly to our more detailed guide we created, you can find it here.

If you’re ready for the basics, let’s get started!

Essentially, HIPAA mandates industry-wide standards for the protection of medical and personal information.

It’s split into the Privacy Rule and the Security Rule, which govern what information is protected and how to properly store, access, transfer, alter, or destroy that information in any form.

So, who’s liable?

If you’re a ‘covered entity’ working in the health field, you are responsible for complying to HIPAA. Not sure if you’re a ‘covered entity’? Check out thishandy guide.

HIPAA mistakes could run you anywhere from $100 to $1.5 million, depending on how often they occur and your level of culpability.

To protect yourself, there are 4 things you’ll want to achieve:

1. Ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all PHI (protected health information) you create, receive, maintain or transmit;
2. Regularly identify (reasonably anticipated) potential threats and take action to protect the information from them;
3. Protect against reasonably anticipated, forbidden uses or disclosures; and
4. Ensure that your workforce knows expectations and procedures regarding PHI, and diligently adheres to those standards.

So, what constitutes PHI?

PHI is any ‘individually identifiable’ health or personal information related to your patients.

How do you protect it?

Measures could include ensuring that there are controls in place to limit access to databases containing PHI, security measures for the transmission of data, and crystal clear documentation for procedures so that everyone at your company is following the same steps.

Feeling a little overwhelmed?

If you’re not a technical person, or you just don’t have the time to create HIPAA compliant procedures and documents, 3 Pie Squrared can help!
With over 20 years of experience in the industry, the consultants at 3 Pie Squared can help you ensure that you are HIPAA compliant. If you’re not sure that the servers you’re using to store patient information fit the bill, we can help you put the technical safeguards in place to make sure that they do. Or, if you’d rather, you can store information on our HIPAA compliant servers instead.
And all those forms, policies, and procedures you need to have in place?
Well, we’ve got those too!

Our standard forms can be easily customized to fit your individual needs. And, our friendly staff is more than happy to help you along the way.

Of course, we always sign a BAA to make sure everyone is secure and protected.

But don’t just take our word for it, check out what our customers are saying!

If you’re ready, just click the buttons below to see the packages available at out new HIPAA Store!