Wednesday, April 24, 2019

How To Comply To HIPAA Management Solutions

By Nancy West


Healthcare institutions have files under their database that contains information regarding their patients. Administrative and management information are also stored in there. These are all confidential and should be protected against malicious intents. They should also comply with the HIPAA management solutions regulated to them.

This Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is under federal law. It primarily simplifies administration, keeps healthcare insurance records, secures electronic records, and protects healthcare information confidentiality. The right as to who can read their medical records is one of the rights of the patient embedded in this act.

A document management system is the software they need to comply with the law. This is installed in their system mainframe to help store, track, record, and manage pertinent information. It can handle large volumes and can help organize files. The system allows easy retrieval of searched information because it is a document repository.

However, the law has some additional features it would like for them to have. First on that list is user authentication. It should be secured and strong enough to prevent unauthorized people from accessing private information. It also suggests in getting a multi factor authentication which has a temporary security code aside from passwords to minimize cyber attacks.

Electronic security systems are to be installed such as firewalls and cyber security tools. These have operating systems which has pre installed software for anti spyware and anti virus. Malicious hands should be kept from getting their sensitive information regarding patient and administration. System updates are needed to ensure maximum security, as well as having comprehensive data protection against new details on cyber attacks.

It is necessary to arrange and group information in accordance to their importance and sensitivity. They may leave benign and common data without security locks as well as encryption on them. On the other hand, the important ones should be assigned at a particular security level ensuring access allowance only to its authorized people.

The method of having information that are translated and encoded in the system is known as encryption. Only those authorized are able to read the files. It uses a cryptographic algorithm to translate plain text to a combination of numbers and letters. It is better if the software they have has a bit encryption that is higher than average to increase the impossibility of any breach.

The law requires transparency and honesty in their records. The system has an audit trail embedded on it so they can see which people have read this certain information. The system administrator can also modify the security level of the information and the people who can access it.

Unforeseen events may happen so to prepare, they should have backups to recover their files. These events may either be software problems, natural calamities, and cyber attacks. There is an off site center where their provider keeps their backups. It is part of their compliance to the act. Their provider has a set of backups in case failures in their systems occur.




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