HIPAA Compliance - Page 5

What Does HIPAA Mean?

What does HIPAA mean? The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a foundational U.S. law passed in 1996 to protect patient health information and ensure its secure handling by healthcare entities. From the forms you fill out at a clinic to the secure portals used for telehealth, HIPAA governs how sensitive health data—known... Continue reading

What Makes a Platform HIPAA Compliant?

In today’s rapidly expanding digital health ecosystem, platforms that handle patient data are becoming essential tools — from telemedicine apps and EHR systems to patient portals and cloud-based scheduling tools. But with this wave of innovation comes a critical responsibility: protecting Protected Health Information (PHI) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). If... Continue reading

Managed Services for HIPAA Hosting

Often when purchasing hosting services and online space, the product is similar between providers. Many hosting providers use the same virtualization technologies and differ only in their implementations and the physical hardware used to house the virtualized environments. What does differ drastically between providers is the quality and array of managed services offered. In many... Continue reading

Largest Patient Breach Blamed on Chinese Hacker Group

On Monday, August 18th, Community Health Systems (CHS) reported that it had been the victim of a cyber attack from a Chinese hacking group named “APT 18”, a group alleged to have ties to the Chinese government. APT 18 successfully stole a large quantity of PHI data, including social security numbers, contact information, and other... Continue reading

Best SQL Server for HIPAA Compliant Businesses

The term “SQL Server” refers to the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) software which runs on the physical/virtual host. There are many different implementations of SQL (Structured Query Language) and choosing between them is dependent upon the database requirements and can have an impact on compliance efforts when dealing with HIPAA guidelines. Many choices are... Continue reading

Retaining Data for a HIPAA Audit

HIPAA guidelines regarding data retention state that the logs (access/activity) and protected health information (PHI) documentation proving that the covered entity is adhering to the HIPAA Security Rule are retained for six (6) years. This regulation mandates that records are to be retained for essentially any interaction with patient PHI and personally identifiable information (PII),... Continue reading