Is Your Practice Using Tools That Are HIPAA-Compliant?

Are your favorite office tools HIPAA-compliant? Read our comprehensive guide and find out if tools like Zoom, Google, and Microsoft are really safe to use at work.

Telemedicine is revolutionizing patient wait times and accessibility. Services like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet make face-to-face meetings with patients and doctors easier and more convenient than ever. With these advancements, however, new challenges arise in compliance and privacy.

What is HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, enacted in 1996 to ensure patients' health information privacy and security. The main goal of the act is to give individuals greater control over their health information while facilitating the efficient flow of information in the healthcare system.

What Makes a Service or Process HIPAA Compliant?

For a service to be HIPAA-compliant, it must ensure patient information's confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This involves implementing security measures like encryption, access controls, and regular audits to detect and address potential vulnerabilities. It's not just about technology, though. HIPAA-compliance also involves training staff, creating policies and procedures, and maintaining a culture of privacy and security. HIPAA-compliance is a mix of tech safeguards and good practices.

Zoom HIPAA Compliance

Free-to-use video chatting software and services like Zoom have increased the convenience of doctor visits without disrupting a whole day. Primarily through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, telemedicine has become more relevant than ever. Services such as Zoom offer HIPAA-compliant versions of their products, but it must work in conjunction with their presets and user practices.

Is Zoom HIPAA Compliant?

As previously mentioned, Zoom does have HIPAA-specific provisions, such as its Business Associate Agreement (BAA). Zoom for Healthcare offers a BAA, a legal agreement between a healthcare provider and a business associate. This agreement outlines the responsibilities and safeguards for handling protected health information, but it also requires the constant attention and safeguarding of the healthcare practice. Zoom has also implemented end-to-end encryption for all meetings and access controls to manage participant permissions and restrict meeting access. This includes features like waiting rooms, meeting passcodes, and limiting screen sharing.

How to Use Zoom for Healthcare

It's crucial to configure and use these features correctly and also to train users on best practices for maintaining HIPAA-compliance. Additionally, staying informed about updates or changes to Zoom's features and policies is advised.

How Compliant is Zoom?

To access these features, you may need to subscribe to the Zoom for Healthcare plan, and during the setup process, you can work with Zoom's support or compliance teams to ensure that your specific use case aligns with HIPAA requirements. The current subscription rate is about $150 per user per year, but they have additional plans that must be requested through their sales team.

Google Workplace/Google Meet

Is Google Workplace HIPAA-Compliant?

Much like Zoom, Google Workplace is indeed HIPAA-compliant, but it also heavily relies on the practices and processes of those utilizing the service. When used appropriately by trained individuals, Google Docs, Worksheet, Meet, Voice, and Drive are all HIPAA-compliant.

Google offers a specialized service called Google Workplace for Healthcare, designed to meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements and other healthcare industry standards.

How to Make Google Workplace HIPAA-Compliant

For starters, Google offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), much like Zoom, outlining a commitment to HIPAA practices. Google also provides additional security controls and features to help safeguard protected health information (PHI), including advanced access controls and audit logs. They also ensure that communication channels, including email and data transmission, are encrypted to protect the confidentiality and integrity of PHI. Google also allows more custom features by offering greater control over data, including where it’s stored and who has access to it.

Microsoft 365

Is Microsoft 365 HIPAA-Compliant?

As with the previous two examples, Microsoft does have a HIPAA-compliant option in the form of a BAA. Outlook, Word, Teams, Excel, and more can be HIPAA compliant but are not inherently so. Like Zoom and Google, however, they can be easily made HIPAA-compliant by trained individuals who know precisely what they’re doing. All varieties of telehealth and virtual programs must be held to the highest standard to protect your data, your patient’s data, and your practice’s reputation.

What are the Consequences of Not Being Compliant with HIPAA?

Healthcare organizations, covered entities, and business associates must prioritize HIPAA-compliance and safeguard patient privacy and data security. Failure to do so can result in numerous consequences of varying severity.

Examples of HIPAA Violation Penalties

Civil Penalties:

Covered entities and business associates found to violate HIPAA regulations may face civil penalties, which can range in severity based on the level of negligence and the nature of the violation. Civil penalties can also accumulate for each violation, and the fines can be substantial. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces HIPAA, can impose penalties through a formal enforcement process.

Criminal Penalties:

Individuals may face criminal charges in cases of willful neglect or intentional wrongful disclosure of PHI. Criminal penalties can include fines and imprisonment. The severity of criminal penalties depends on the nature and intent of the violation. Individuals who knowingly obtain or disclose PHI without authorization can be subject to criminal prosecution.

Corrective Action Plans and Resolution Agreements:

In addition to monetary penalties, non-compliant entities may be required to implement corrective action plans to address identified deficiencies in their HIPAA-compliance. The Office for Civil Rights may enter into resolution agreements with non-compliant entities, outlining specific actions they must take to correct HIPAA violations and prevent future incidents. These agreements often include a period of monitoring to ensure ongoing compliance.

How NexHealth Can Help You Stay HIPAA-Compliant

All of the above office software is perfectly reasonable regarding HIPAA-compliance, but none of them are inherently so. NexHealth offers numerous services geared explicitly toward maintaining compliance and relieving the burden of healthcare providers. Such services include our HIPAA-compliant, secure messaging service, a convenient form builder, and fully compliant scheduling software, which simplifies and streamlines the patient-provider experience. The best advice for maintaining a HIPAA-compliant practice is to let NexHealth shoulder the burden so you can continue on providing quality care.