What does it mean to be a HIPAA Compliant Datacenters?

 

HIPAA Compliant Datacenters are an essential part of the Healthcare Industry. With the increasing amount of regulations and penalties imposed by the Department of Health & Human Services and the Office of Civil Rights for PHI breaches, there is now a growing trend of outsourcing services to Datacenter and Hosting service providers in the industry.

Since Datacenters directly deal with ePHI i.e. store, process and transmit PHI on behalf of healthcare institutes, they fall in the scope of HIPAA Regulation. The HIPAA Omnibus Rule holds all third-party including contractors and sub-contractors accountable for a data breach that may occur. This does not just include Business Associates but also subcontractors, entities who transmit or deal with protected health information (PHI).

Earlier all the liability was assumed by the covered entity and not the business associates who directly or indirectly entered into a service agreement with the covered entity. So, Datacenters engage or deal with ePHI they are required to comply with the HIPAA Regulation and establish the same level of administrative safeguards, physical safeguards, technical safeguards, and conduct ongoing due diligence as the Covered Entity (Healthcare Institutes).

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which is also known as HIPAA was established as a security standard for protecting the privacy and confidentiality of electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) in the Healthcare industry. As per this HIPAA Rule, covered entities who store, transmit or process electronically protected health information (ePHI) are required to implement administrative, physical, and technical safeguards as stated in the regulation. 

This is to ensure that the safeguards implemented preserves the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of ePHI while preventing the possibility of unauthorized access to ePHI. So, explaining this in detail, we have covered an article elaborating what HIPAA compliant Datacenters mean and what are the various HIPAA Datacenter requirements that the service providers need to adhere to.

What Does HIPAA Compliant Datacenter mean?

Protecting the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of ePHI is an integral part of the HIPAA Security & Privacy Rule. Since Datacenters deal with ePHI data, they must comply with HIPAA regulations.  They need to adhere to the industry best practices and implement preventative security measures.

This is then evaluated by the auditors against the HIPAA rules and requirements. Datacenters must meet all requirements and follow all the necessary policies and procedures before claiming to be HIPAA-compliant. Datacenters are required to provide adequate data security measures to protect the data of their clients.

This does not just offer the security of the PHI data and but provides confidence to healthcare institutes that their patients’ sensitive PHI data is well protected and secured. But to achieve compliance, let us take a closer look at HIPAA Compliance Requirements for Datacenters.