HIPAA : Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

HIPAA in India applies to businesses that work with companies that store, maintain, create or receive protected health information. 

In 1996, a significant healthcare reform law was passed by Congress in the U.S.A known as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). The primary purpose of the Act is to tighten the laws involving healthcare billing, patient health information administration, and privacy of health information. HIPAA is successful in combating fraud in health insurance and has simplified the administration of health insurance, increased the portability of health insurance coverage, and improved the access to long-term health services. 

As a software developer in India, one may develop software for healthcare organizations that makes you work with patients’ protected health information (PHI). In that case, you need to be HIPAA-compliant. The HIPAA rules apply to businesses and entities dealing with patient health data, including insurance companies, medical providers, insurance companies, and employer health plans. 

Since HIPAA compliance is an ongoing process, there is nothing like HIPAA certification. It’s only compliance to HIPAA and a company can verify and validate that they are HIPAA compliant and have a third-party verification and validation of HIPAA compliance.

What are the Challenges Dealt With? 

HIPAA compliance deals with several challenges like 

• Targeted threats- Attacks that are specifically designed to compromise healthcare networks and steal health information. 

• Resource gap- Security resources are required to perform regular security testing, and risk assessment and enforce security rules throughout the system or network. 
• Regular updates- This needs an efficient IT team who can keep the network updated, configured, and patched properly. 

Comprehensive and Effective Compliance Program: 

1. Self-Audits: These audits assess the technical, physical, and administrative safeguards put in place by the company to secure PHI. Ideally, five self-audits are recommended annually.
2. Gap Identification and Remediation: By self-audits, gaps in the safeguards are identified. Now necessary remediation efforts are to be made according to HIPAA standards.
3. Policies and Procedures: The policies and procedures dictate the proper uses and disclosures of PHI by your organization. It also creates a framework for how your organization adheres to the requirements of HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules.
4. Employee Training: As an organization, your employees who come in contact with PHI must be aware of their HIPAA responsibilities. Employee training must be conducted annually and should include HIPAA basics, your organization’s policies, and procedures, cybersecurity, and proper use of social media.
5. Management of Business Associates: As a software developer you are likely to work with other business associates such as hosting providers, email providers,s and other vendors that have access to PHI data. As such, before sharing any PHI with other organizations, you must vet them with a vendor questionnaire and sign a HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA) according to HIPAA standards.
6. Effective Incident Management: In case of any security breach affecting PHI, you are required to report the incident. Effective incident management enables reporting breaches timely and tracking reported incidence.

HIPAA Verification

Once an effective HIPAA compliance program is implemented, a third-party review of the compliance program allows the third party to verify and validate your efforts. 

How to Become HIPAA compliant in India? 

HIPAA in India applies to businesses that work with companies that receive, create, transmit, store or maintain protected health information (PHI). To ensure that a business is adequately safeguarding and securing PHI, the company has to implement an effective HIPAA compliance program.  

At G-Info Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd., through our experienced consulting services and industry-proven HIPAA compliance program, we offer the healthcare industry the most rigorous and efficient solution for complying with HIPAA regulations. Our experts have complete knowledge of key-level regulations impacting healthcare organizations. We help you to take all necessary steps to ensure HIPAA compliance. We also assist in designing practical and actionable plans for achieving compliance, making sure that all the rules and regulations are followed. The methodology followed is – 

• Evaluating your compliance with the HIPAA Rule 

• Regular assessment of response report and remediation plan 
• Assisting your compliance team 
• Educating the staff with rules and regulations.