All About Technology Original

HIPAA Technical Safeguards - WheelHouse IT 2890 West State Rd 84 Suite 108 Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312 (954) 474-2204

Oct 23

There are several online storage applications that healthcare professionals need for the storage and sharing of protected patient health information (HIPAA). The HIPAA Technical Safeguards are the parts of the HIPAA Safeguard Act and this part of the act sketches how the applications which the healthcare professionals are using must be safeguarded so that the PHI of patients is always protected while the information is stored or shared. The protection of online sharing and storage devices should be handled by the managed IT service providers so that there is no non-compliance with the Technical Safeguard as underlined by the HIPAA act.

The HIPAA technical safeguards can be divided into many imposed elements that need to be addressed by the healthcare professionals to the Tee. Some of the addressable elements which are an important part of the technical safeguard include automatic log-off of the systems when the user is not around their system for more than five minutes. These features are a part of the software development on the system that is used by healthcare professionals, an act that could be exceptionally performed by the best managed IT service providers.

Some important features of the HIPAA technical safeguards 

  • Accessing Control Requirements: Those employees who are entitled to using the system for sharing or storing or working on the health records should have a unique employee ID. This unique employee ID can be used to track and identify any update or change in the healthcare records of the patients which are made by the employees who are associated with any kind of healthcare association. The unique employee ID assigned to each individual associated with the healthcare industry helps to verify the identity of the person who wants to get access to the PHI.

 

  • Secured Transmission: Secured Transmission is yet another important subdivision of the HIPAA Technical Safeguards. According to this section, security measures should be implemented by the managed IT service companies that are entrusted with designing the protection of the online applications that are used by healthcare providers. The IT professionals are responsible for ensuring that the PHI is properly encrypted while in storage or transmission. Besides, the mechanism should be set up to protect the encryption of data wherever it seems to be necessary.

 

  • Regular Audits for compliance: HIPAA Technical Safeguards also insists that healthcare professionals and organisations should implement software that could frequently keep a check to ensure that whenever the PHI is accessed, used or updated it is compliant with the HIPAA guidelines.

 

To ensure that, HIPAA Technical Safeguards are followed diligently by all the employees who are associated with the healthcare industry, it would be a prudent decision on the part of the healthcare providers and facilities to share the responsibilities related to tech support to the best managed IT services.