Brightworks IT helps businesses in the healthcare field manage their HIPAA compliance needs with ease by setting up time-tested systems for handling, storing, and moving of sensitive data.
Maintaining HIPAA compliance is a monumental issue. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) states that all health organizations must keep their electronic protected health information (ePHI) safe. This information strictly needs to be handled, accessed, moved, and processed in ways that prevent unauthorized people from acquiring it. For any company working in healthcare, the HIPAA compliance process is non-negotiable.
Our team of seasoned HIPAA compliance security consultants at Brightworks IT can help you establish policies for gathering and storing data — policies that keep you compliant today and in the future. We don’t just do the bare minimum. Our goal is to find smart, innovative ways for your business to stay compliant without causing any problems for your current operations.
What Happens When You are Non-Compliant?
The fines for not following HIPAA rules can cost you a fortune. For a single instance, the fine can be anywhere from $100 to $50,000, depending on how serious the oversight was. There is a yearly cap of $1.5 million for repeated violations of the same rule as well. If a business keeps handling or sharing ePHI in ways that do not meet HIPAA standards, they could face millions in fines.
The severity of a HIPAA violation is judged by several factors:
- How big the breach was
- How much harm it caused to patients
- What your organization did to stop, report, and fix the breach
- Whether you have previously broken the rules
Are Your Business Partners HIPAA Compliant?
Did you know that 51% of companies suffer a data breach directly linked to a third party? For HIPAA-compliant enterprises, this is a big concern. These breaches can hurt your compliance status and also damage your customers’ trust in you. It’s important to thoroughly audit any business associate that will store your customer data to make sure they meet HIPAA standards and have strong practices for handling customer data.
Brightworks IT conducts thorough security audits in line with both HIPAA and HITECH to ensure your business partners are current and not putting your organization at risk. If a partner has never needed to meet HIPAA standards before, we help them set up policies and practices that keep them compliant.
What Are HIPAA Compliance Rules?
To ensure HIPAA compliance, organizations need to adhere to several key aspects:
- The Security Rule lays out administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect ePHI (Electronic Protected Health Information). This includes measures like employee security training, conducting risk assessments, implementing data encryption, and establishing incident response and recovery procedures.
- The Privacy Rule imposes restrictions on the use and disclosure of PHI (Protected Health Information).
- The Enforcement Rule outlines the processes and penalties associated with non-compliance.
- The Breach Notification Rule specifies the procedures a company should follow when reporting HIPAA breaches to regulatory authorities.
- The Omnibus Rule introduces significant changes to HIPAA requirements. It includes a more detailed risk assessment process, additional security controls, and stricter penalties for non-compliance.
Our Dedicated HIPAA Compliance Services
Whether you need complete assistance or targeted support, we have got you covered:
- HIPAA compliance assessment: We evaluate how well a business or medical software aligns with HIPAA requirements, and then identify necessary steps to ensure HIPAA compliance.
- HIPAA compliance program development and implementation: We help with establishing and maintaining security policies, procedures, and controls for protecting PHI. Our goal is to ensure 100% compliance with HIPAA regulations.
- HIPAA breach remediation: We address security vulnerabilities found in your applications and IT infrastructure. This may result from a PHI breach, an OCR audit, or a routine HIPAA compliance assessment.
- HIPAA-compliant software design and development: Leveraging our expertise in healthcare IT and secure software development, we design high-quality medical solutions that adhere to HIPAA standards.
Our Full Range of HIPAA Compliance Services for Enterprises
Analysis and management of PHI risks
We assess the risks associated with PHI breaches and develop strategies to mitigate these risks effectively for all types of businesses, including healthcare providers.
Review and enhancement of HIPAA policies
We carefully examine your current security procedures to provide recommendations for improvement and suggest missing policies, utilizing our thorough compliance process.
Evaluating the security of applications and IT infrastructure
We scrutinize your network architecture, conduct vulnerability assessments, and perform penetration testing. To understand the extent of your security, we review your application architecture and source code. Then, we implement user access controls, authentication mechanisms, and encryption for PHI. We also establish backup mechanisms for PHI data and develop processes for detecting and responding to PHI breaches.
Promotion of HIPAA compliance awareness
We engage with your staff and business associates to evaluate their familiarity with HIPAA provisions. Checking the effectiveness of your HIPAA training process and materials is also part of our job. Our consultants then recommend concrete steps you can take to enhance awareness and build an efficient training process if necessary.
Enhancing IT network security
We design your network architecture by configuring essential security components such as firewalls, anti-malware solutions, and IDS/IPS. Our engineers implement SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems and set up identity and access management protocols.
Improving medical software security and compliance
If there are any security vulnerabilities, we will identify and address them. If your software needs to be upgraded with advanced security features to maintain compliance with HIPAA regulations, we will take care of that as well.
Developing HIPAA-compliant software
We create feature-rich medical solutions. This means we translate HIPAA requirements into software specifications and design an ironclad development infrastructure. You will also be given guidance on implementing safe coding practices.
Get Peace of Mind with Our Professional HIPAA Compliance Service
Brightworks IT makes sure that your investment in HIPAA compliance aligns precisely with your business’s size, complexity, and unique needs to avoid unnecessary expenses (in the form of fines, for example). We leave no room for oversight in understanding HIPAA intricacies. Our team of HIPAA consultants, healthcare software developers, and security experts can proficiently assess, implement, and improve both administrative and technical safeguards mandated by HIPAA.If our collaboration continues, we offer subsequent services, such as recurring HIPAA compliance assessments or managed HIPAA compliance services, at reduced costs and with shorter turnaround times. Give our managed IT services a call at (844) 333-2948 or contact us online to schedule an appointment.