Is your practice HIPAA compliant?

The protection of health information is our specialty at Assured Tech Services. We support smartphones and tablets as well as digital records management to connect health care practices with patients and store their data. This makes HIPAA compliance even more important. In order to stay on the right side of the law, your company must have regulations and security practices in place to protect sensitive data, including HIPAA compliant software. Here is our easy breakdown of HIPAA. Want more personalized help? Call us at 248-243-7160.

The HIPAA Act - In a Nutshell

The HIPAA Act is the cornerstone of modern medical records management regulation for US companies. Health care providers, or companies providing services to these providers, who handle sensitive medical information must ensure the security and safekeeping of all PHI (personal health information, whether electronic or not) that they deal with.

When it was created, the HIPAA Act was designed to evolve over time, and even though companies understood the ins and outs at the beginning, much has changed since then. Therefore it's important that you invest in secure communication and file exchange solutions which are tailor-made to facilitate HIPAA compliance at all times. These will protect patient and customer data from being leaked or hacked, exposing them to identity fraud and possibly even harming your business if your data systems are hit with ransomware or viruses. As a consequence, it also prevents you from nightmarish public relations scandals and possible fines.

Are you compliant?

To ensure compliance, you need to make sure you have done everything possible to safeguard both patient privacy and data security.

There are three main tenets:

• You need to have an appointed compliance officer who oversees and implements compliance measures.

• You must willfully train any staff who handle PHI and ensure their training is up to date, retraining at least every two years; with regards to ePHI data security, you must undertake risk assessments and plug any identifiable gaps in compliance at least once per year.

• You must implement secure and robust document controls, whether with regards to patient rights documents, processes, business associate contracts or other ePHI data.

How HIPAA compliant software can help

Data security is clearly a challenge for any medical service provider. To maintain the value of your business, it is imperative to instill trust in your patients. When you enlist the help of a full-service dental and medical office technology provider that is experienced in HIPAA compliance and auditing, you can feel assured that you'll be backed by specialists able to provide:

• Modern, user-friendly software and technology, whether for data gathering, practice management or medical-specific application, which is designed with HIPAA compliance in mind.

• Compliant, discreet and fully integrated installation, upgrades and maintenance solutions, whether for software, hardware or networking.

• Ongoing IT support, maintenance, and monitoring for your hardware or data management, when you need it.

At Assured Technology Services, we are dedicated to delivering manageable IT solutions to all your medical practice's needs, helping to streamline your daily processes and maintain a high standard of HIPAA compliance. To find out more, you can reach us at 248-243-7160 or email support@assuredtechservices.com.