Privacy is one of the most important things today that needs to be respected at all costs. Businesses, especially, need to be extra careful when handling the records of their clients and customers because it may contain private and sensitive information that should not be accessible to anyone else. However, over the past few years, there have been multiple cases of security breaches and invasion of privacy that have resulted in multiple legal cases that have resulted ultimately in defamatory charges as well as companies being charged heavily.
Companies that deal with medical records especially need to be very careful primarily because the patient’s records and statistics must be accessible only to a limited number of people and should not end up in the wrong hands or it could lead to unbearable circumstances for both the company and the medical caretaker. To protect both the patient as well as the doctor from facing any such incident, companies usually opt for HIPAA compliance that is basically an act that protects any breach of private or sensitive information or personal records, etc. For more information regarding the implementation of HIPAA compliance, use the following source link https://www.providertech.com/hipaa-compliant-texting.
HIPAA is basically an acronym that is actually known as the Health Insurance Protection and Accountability Act. This was originated in 1996 and is now of great use to companies, especially those that deal with medical services online. A good example of such a company would be of an online platform that would, for instance, connect certified psychotherapists with patients seeking therapy online. If the platform is HIPAA compliant, both the therapists as well as the patient can rest assured that there would be no instance of a security breach or any sort of information leakage and the information of the patient would only be accessible to the therapist who is treating the patient at the time. Indeed, being HIPAA compliant adds to the authenticity of a firm and helps the customer in trusting the firm blindly.
How is HIPAA Compliance Implemented?
Now that the concept of HIPAA compliance is very clear, one must be aware of how it actually works or more simply put, how is the HIPAA compliance implemented or put into practice in reality? There are five key steps that can actually lead to the proper implementation of HIPAA compliance for a certain selected firm.
The first step is to choose a privacy and security officer. This is one of the basic steps that involves the selection of the company or individual that will help the certain firm to get registered for HIPAA compliance.
The next step involves internal and external risk assessment. This assessment is conducted by the firm itself as the management tries to weigh in the pros and cons of the HIPAA compliance.
The third step is perhaps the most important one. This step involves the implementation of all the privacy and security rules and procedures that have been noted in the act previously.
The penultimate step is the agreement between the business associates.
Lastly, the employees of the company should be trained according to the HIPAA compliance act so they know what they have to do individually.