MSPs and HIPAA Compliance Services
Like any other business, your medical facility depends on information technology. In fact, you can probably think of a long list of ways that you use technology to assist your patients if you take a moment to reflect on them all. But whether or not your solutions function is just one aspect of your IT worries.
To maintain patient privacy and adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations, those solutions must be set up and secured. If you don’t adhere to HIPAA compliance requirements, your company could face a variety of issues, such as disgruntled clients, legal actions, and even punishment. You must identify any possible compliance issues and create a plan to address and manage them.
HIPAA and Your Technology
Adhering to HIPAA requires enterprises to put in place technology, policies, and procedures that guarantee the safe handling and appropriate use of protected health information, as well as prompt notice and correction of data breaches. It entails making sure that software products provide dependable protection for electronic protected health information (ePHI). Software that combines features like data backup, disaster recovery plans, logging and monitoring, encryption both in transit and at rest, secure communication, access controls, and encryption in line with HIPAA rules is considered HIPAA-compliant.
MSPs and HIPAA Compliance Services
What is an MSP?
A managed service provider (MSP) is a third-party company that manages and oversees a customer’s IT infrastructure and end-user systems, often on a proactive basis and under a subscription model. In the context of healthcare, an MSP can be crucial in ensuring HIPAA compliance by implementing and maintaining robust security measures to protect ePHI.
What services do MSPs offer to healthcare organizations?
MSPs offer valuable HIPAA compliance services and more, including regular security audits, data encryption, access control, disaster recovery planning, and staff training on HIPAA regulations. By managing these complex IT and HIPAA compliance service tasks, MSPs help healthcare organizations mitigate risks, prevent data breaches, and ensure adherence to all relevant legal and regulatory standards.
How can an MSP help keep your organization HIPAA compliant?
Using an MSP can help keep your healthcare organization HIPAA compliant. All ePHI in your IT environment, whether it is in transit or at rest, needs to be encrypted. An MSP will, among other things, check to see if you’re currently meeting this need. If not, they’ll put the necessary processes in place to get you started with data encryption. Your MSP will additionally take various precautions to safeguard your data. They will ensure that you have a suitable backup and disaster recovery strategy in place so that you can retrieve the data you require in the event that something destroys it.
Other important HIPAA compliance services MSPs provide to your healthcare organization include:
PHI risk analysis and management
- Assessment of ePHI breach risks
- Developing a risk mitigation plan
- Establishing PHI breach detection and breach notification processes
HIPAA policies and procedures review and improvement
- Analysis of existing security policies and procedures
- Improvement recommendations
Security assessment of applications and IT infrastructure
- Network architecture assessment
- Vulnerability assessment & penetration testing
Implementing PHI security measures
- Implementing user access controls and multi factor authentication
- Encryption of ePHI in transit and at rest
- ePHI cloud backup services
Securing IT networks
- Designing a secure network architecture
- Installing and configuring firewalls, anti-malware, IDS/IPS
- Regular security assessments of the IT infrastructure
What are the challenging areas of MSP HIPAA compliance services?
An MSP with healthcare clients will likely share in their clients’ risks. HIPAA applies not just to healthcare providers, like doctors and dentists, and to payers, like health plans; it also applies to vendors and suppliers who require access to PHI to perform their work.
If an MSP stores or manages ePHI on behalf of a customer, it must be prepared to handle patient requests for access to their health information as permitted under the Privacy Rule. Therefore, the MSP should understand patients’ rights, permissible uses and disclosures of individually identifiable health information, and the minimum necessary standard. Compliance with other areas of the Privacy Rule may also be necessary, depending on the services provided to the customer.
According to the HIPAA Journal, ensuring the following three areas of MSP HIPAA compliance services can be particularly challenging.
- MSP complies with all applicable standards of the Security Rule.
- The services provided by the MSP are configured to support HIPAA compliance.
- MSP support services have the HIPAA expertise required to answer clients’ questions.
Choosing the Right MSP for HIPAA Compliance Services
Choosing the right MSP for your HIPAA compliance services is crucial for safeguarding patient information. An ideal MSP should have a thorough understanding of HIPAA regulations and demonstrate proven experience in managing healthcare IT infrastructures. Look for an MSP that offers comprehensive HIPAA compliance services, including regular security audits, data encryption, access control, disaster recovery planning, and staff training on HIPAA regulations.
Additionally, ensure that the MSP has the necessary expertise to handle patient requests for health information and understands the nuances of permissible uses and disclosures of PHI. Partnering with a knowledgeable and proactive MSP can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and ensure continuous compliance with all relevant legal and regulatory standards.
As a trusted IT advisor and MSP, Alexonet ensures all their healthcare provider and payer clients comply with HIPAA regulations related to their IT services. You can run your business worry-free knowing that Alexonet is there to assist you with our HIPAA compliance services.