Health Insurance Portability

and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was enacted by the United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. It has been known as the Kennedy–Kassebaum Act or Kassebaum–Kennedy Act after two of its leading sponsors. Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability of Act demands that all HIPAA covered businesses prevent unauthorized access to “Protected Health Information” or PHI. PHI includes patients’ names, addresses, and all information pertaining to the patients’ health and payment records.

Covered entities

Covered entities are defined as health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers who electronically transmit any health information in connection with transactions for which HHS has adopted standards.

Disaster recovery plan

HIPAA disaster recovery plan is a document that specifies the resources, actions, personnel and data that are required to protect and reinstate healthcare information in the event of a fire, vandalism, natural disaster or system failure.

Compliant cloud storage

There are a few things that are essential when it comes to finding a compliant cloud storage provider. You need to be very careful, since putting your data “in the cloud” makes it hard to achieve HIPAA-compliant levels of security. When the PHI is completely out of your hands and stored on an off-site network (as cloud storage is), you need to be absolutely sure that your data is properly encrypted in case of a breach.