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How to Ensure HIPAA Compliance in Healthcare Technology?

$5,982,150!

That’s how expensive HIPAA violations were in terms of settlements and penalties in 2021.

Clearly, negligence in the healthcare industry is costly. HIPAA financial penalties range from a few thousand bucks to several million dollars. Not to mention the class action lawsuits that result from such violations.

However, by ensuring HIPAA compliance, you can avoid any monetary losses.

In healthcare technology systems, some common HIPAA compliance violations include:

  • Failure to safeguard patient’s electronic medical records due to data breaches, unencrypted data, or unattended portable electronic devices
  • Allowing unauthorized personnel access to electronic patient health information (ePHI) or accessing ePHI on unauthorized devices.
  • Failure to perform risk analysis or lack of risk management processes in healthcare technology
  • Lack of technical training for healthcare employees

HIPAA compliance ensures a secure intersection between healthcare information, technology, and security.

In this article, we’ll discuss HIPAA compliance in healthcare technology and provide a checklist to help you make your data and systems HIPAA-compliant.

Table of Contents

➥ What is HIPAA Compliance?

➥ 3 HIPAA Safeguards–Technical, Physical, Administrative

➥ Which Data Attributes Are Protected Under HIPAA Privacy Rule?

➥ What Happens When Protected Health Information (PHI) Is Breached?

➥ Build HIPAA Compliant Healthcare Systems With Nextfiniti

What is HIPAA Compliance?

HIPAA–Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ensures the safeguarding of patients' protected health information (PHI) by setting federal regulatory security and compliance standards governed by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Healthcare organizations use electronic healthcare record (EHR) systems, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, and laboratory and pharmacy systems. These systems must meet HIPAA compliance by protecting sensitive patient data from physical, network, or process breaches.

Simply put, the hospital cannot disclose any healthcare information intentionally or unintentionally without the patient’s consent under the HIPAA act. Moreover, the hospital must have a contingency plan to prevent information theft or loss.

The HIPAA laws have four major rules:

We’ll briefly discuss these HIPAA rules for building HIPAA-compliant health tech systems from a software development perspective.

3 HIPAA Security Safeguards–Technical, Physical, Administrative

The HIPAA Security Rule contains three security safeguards relevant to healthcare software. These are:

  1. Technical safeguards
  2. Physical safeguards
  3. Administrative safeguards

While the technical safeguards are more relevant to healthcare software, the physical and administrative safeguards ensure protection against all kinds of physical ill-intentions, mishaps, or threats to the software or hardware. Let’s discuss them in detail below.

1. HIPAA Security Rule: Technical Safeguards

To ensure HIPAA IT compliance, the following technical safeguards limit access to healthcare software and hardware or relevant technology.

  • Access Control: Only authorized users should access, read, write, modify, or communicate the minimum necessary electronic protected health information (ePHI) to ensure HIPAA compliance. The access control protocol ensures that each user is assigned a unique identifier to enable user tracking, ePHI is accessible under emergency conditions, unattended workstations or user accounts should log off automatically, and encryption/decryption of ePHI.
  • Audit Control: In case of a HIPAA violation, the healthcare system’s software and hardware must be auditable to identify and examine unauthorized activity.
  • Integrity: These protocols ensure that sensitive patient information is not altered or destroyed due to human intervention or electronic failures. ePHI integrity can be maintained using digital signatures or checksum verification.
  • Person or Entity Authentication: The person looking to access ePHI must be authenticated using protocols such as password, PIN, smart card, key, token, or biometrics which may include voice, facial, iris patterns, or fingerprints
  • Transmission Security: These safeguards ensure that sensitive information transmitted over the internet via email or other forms of electronic transmission is encrypted and not improperly modified.

Moreover, healthcare companies can implement other redundant security measures such as backing up ePHI data servers frequently, enforcing user re-login after 30, 60, or 90 days and adding 2FA (two-factor authentication) with OTP access for robustness.

2. HIPAA Security Rule: Physical Safeguards

Per HIPAA compliance standards, only authorized personnel should be allowed physical access to sensitive information, related equipment, and building. To ensure security compliance, the following physical safeguards are in place:

  • Facility Access Control: These safeguards limit the physical access of unauthorized personnel to the building by using locked doors, surveillance cameras, alarms, identification badges, visitor badges, and property control tags. Moreover, the facility must be guarded by a security patrol. In addition, the protocols include contingency plans for disaster or emergency events. Personnel should be given role-based access to software, hardware, and the facility to ensure HIPAA compliance.
  • Workstation Use & Security: Only authorized users must be physically allowed to operate workstations that have access to ePHI. These workstations can include personal digital assistants, laptops, or desktop computers that can be placed in secure rooms, offices, or under the protection of the healthcare staff.
  • Device and Media Controls: These safeguards monitor and restrict the movement of devices containing ePHI within and out of the facility.

3. HIPAA Security Rule: Administrative Safeguards

The following administrative safeguards offer a robust foundation for ensuring HIPAA compliance in healthcare technology systems:

  • Security Management Process: Perform risk assessment on healthcare technology systems to highlight vulnerabilities and develop mitigation policies.
  • Assign Security Responsibility: The healthcare organization must assign a security officer or privacy officer to address all HIPAA compliance issues regarding protected information.
  • Workforce Security: These procedures include supervising healthcare personnel having access to ePHI, for instance, revoking all access to ePHI when a person leaves the organization.
  • Information Access Management: These protocols ensure that when patients request access to their electronic medical records, it is disclosed promptly. The healthcare software must ensure that records are available at all times.
  • Security and Awareness Training: Healthcare employees must be provided security training periodically to ensure HIPAA compliance. These protocols also include sending regular security reminders, detecting unauthorized login attempts, and password protection and management.
  • Security Incident Procedures: These safeguards enable healthcare companies to detect, report, and respond to security incidents. Furthermore, it includes policies to contain and mitigate such harmful incidents and documents their outcomes.
  • Contingency Plan: Besides developing contingency against physical incidents like fire, natural disasters, and vandalism, these safeguards offer guidelines for protection against ransomware attacks that can jeopardize the integrity of ePHI.
  • Evaluation: Frequently check the robustness of the security policies and procedures adopted by the healthcare provider for protecting their sensitive assets.

Which Data Attributes Are Protected Under HIPAA Privacy Rule?

While developing healthcare technology systems, software developers should build safeguards around the following protected data attributes:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Telephone number
  • Fax number
  • Social Security Number
  • Medical record number
  • Health plan beneficiary number
  • Account number
  • Dates including birth date, admission date, discharge date, date of death
  • Email address
  • Certificate or license number
  • License plate number
  • Device identifier and serial number
  • Web URL and IP address
  • Biometrics patterns like finger, voice, face, or retina
  • Individual’s images
  • Data attributes that can uniquely identify the patient

What Happens When Protected Health Information Is Breached?

When ePHI is breached, the healthcare organization must notify the affected parties within 60 days of the reported breach as per HIPAA Breach Notification Rule. If the breach affects more than 500 individuals, breach notifications must be issued to prominent media channels, and the Secretary of breaches must be informed.

When a breach is detected, the company must take rapid response steps to isolate, eradicate, and investigate the breach and its origin. Then fortify their existing security operations to avoid future mishaps.

If a company is found in violation of HIPAA compliance standards, they are penalized according to HIPAA Enforcement Rule as per the relevant Penalty Tiers (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4) and culpability level (lack of knowledge, reasonable cause, willful neglect, and willful neglect not corrected within 30 days). The HIPAA violation penalties can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.

Build HIPAA Compliant Healthcare Systems With Nextfiniti

Technology-assisted healthcare offers various benefits to healthcare professionals and patients. However, any negligence in the protection of ePHI could result in financial damages to the healthcare organization using that technology.

Here’s a summary of the HIPAA compliance checklist to ensure the privacy and security of sensitive information.

  • Ensure authorized access to buildings, equipment, and software
  • Use encryption and decryption to protect sensitive patient information
  • Use password, PIN, 2FA, and OTP to enable authorized access to software and workstation
  • Train employees frequently to make them aware of HIPAA Privacy and Security rules
  • Assess risks and develop relevant contingency plans to avoid loss or theft of ePHI
  • Monitor the transmission of ePHI both internally and externally

At Nextfiniti, we value privacy and security in all operations. Our developers and engineers are well-versed with healthcare security and privacy practices and HIPAA standards. Contact us today to build HIPAA-compliant custom health tech solutions.