7 Reasons We Should Care About HIPAA being a Healthcare Business Owner

HIPAA is basically a statute of the USA’s federal government legislated to accommodate health insurance matters. Accommodation receiving entities are humans, organizations as employers, and insurance providers.

Being a healthcare business owner, one must know about HIPAA ranging from the very basics to its rarest facts.

HIPAA, apart from just being an accommodating body, plays a role of a regulator as well so as to keep things in a standardized manner for everyone. Standardization leads to minimizing the confusions, mitigate discrepancies, and reduce issues regarding data like data loss, manipulation, fraud, etc.

Here are the 7 reasons we should care about HIPAA being a healthcare business provider-

1. HIPAA compliance is Mandatory

To maintain the objectives of being a healthcare provider, to ensure data safety, the overall security of the data, and confidentiality, HIPAA compliance is directly or indirectly compulsory. There are many who are HIPAA compliant and can tell what it means to be HIPAA compliant but on the other side, there are many who run businesses with customized EDI standards.

However, they are very much ready to face some unwanted consequences at any time by customizing the standards.

Moreover, they would be then bound to partner with those only that possess similar customized standards to exchange information with.

2. Carrying forward with the insurance is possible due to HIPAA

If you run an enterprise software development company and want your employees to enroll confidently through your organization and not leave due to such a reason which has nothing to do with your company’s ability or brand value, then you must be HIPAA compliant.

The main objective of HIPAA is to make possible the carrying forward of health insurance from one company to another without terminating and enrolling for the new one.

This influential fact plays a vital role in not only compliance safety but also in employee gaining and retention factors also.

3. Paper-based safety is not sufficient

In this tech-friendly world today, the necessity of safety, security has increased influentially. Now, the paper records couldn’t meet the requirements, and neither could they keep the confidentiality the way it should be.

Thus, HIPAA compliance and electronic data protection are vital requirements for a healthcare service provider to keep things confidential and run the business smoothly.

4. HIPAA provides adequate transparency

There are some misconceptions about HIPAA in the healthcare providers channel, that it prevents the organization (employer) from asking for a doctor’s note for an absence. The fact isn’t true and the fact is it allows the same.

5. HIPAA covers ‘Covered Entities’ & ‘Business Associates’

Many employers think that if they carry health-related information of their employees, they have to do something about HIPAA compliance now. However, the fact is, HIPAA covers only two bodies i.e. ‘covered entities’ and ‘business associates’.

Covered entities are those which are sponsoring the health insurance for their employees themselves. And business associates are those that are providing the same services to an organization’s employees by not being a part of that organization but being an association only.

6. HIPAA mitigates the probable risks

If your organization has opted for EDI managed services and is HIPAA compliant, a few probable risks would be reduced effectively and counted as HIPAA violations if anyone tries to attempt that way. The organization has to worry and worry not both simultaneously, depending on the severity and how it happened.

7. Possible cases which HIPAA takes care of

• An attempt to hack OR improper access of data from an outsider.
• Even when the device or storage entity gets lost due to any reason.
• When the essential information is disposed of without any specific or substantial reason.

Thus, these are a few facts and reasons why we should keep HIPAA in mind while running or beginning with a healthcare business. You may check on how a Salesforce health cloud meets HIPAA compliance and things went simpler later which were a bit complex to start with. Note that, precautionary measures should never be neglected as they keep us safe from the late-coming and unwanted aspects.