Building Trust: Ensuring HIPAA Compliance with Custom Home Health Care Software

As a healthcare provider, you know the importance of data and the way it can change your approach to care delivery. Most practices which shifted to custom healthcare software solutions found it as an appropriate way to make their practice data-backed and evidence based.

Having said that, as the world is transitioning to a digital ecosystem, data is often considered as the new-age currency. Given your specialization in home care services, your home care software deals with all sorts of personal data of your patients.

Here, if this data is leaked, it could not only damage your practice’s reputation but also heavy fines, etc. But given that healthcare IT is not your area of expertise, your shift to custom home healthcare software requires you to comply with the HIPAA regulations.

HIPAA compliant home healthcare software development ensures that you’ve taken all the necessary measures to ensure the safety of the data and also helps build trust amongst patients that their data is safe and is used ethically.

However, there are different aspects of HIPAA compliance that can be pivotal for your healthcare data security solution.

In this blog, let’s explore the necessary intricacies of HIPAA compliant custom home care software and how it can define your practice.

Understanding HIPAA & Its Requirements

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which is a federal law enacted in 1996 to protect sensitive patient health information (PHI) from unauthorized disclosure. The key provisions revolve around the following three factors:

• Health Insurance Portability

• Privacy and Security

• Administrative Simplification

Furthermore, covering all the necessary aspects of safeguarding patient health information (PHI), HIPAA requires your home care software to take these necessary steps:

• Risk analysis and implementation of robust security measures.

• Employee training and education on handling patient data.

• Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with contractors and vendors.

• Incident Response Plan for data breaches.

• PHI Disposal with secure destruction mechanism.

• Secure mobile devices and remote accessibility.

• Minimum necessary use.

While HIPAA compliance is a large topic that covers all the important aspects of healthcare data security, not adhering to its regulations for data encryption and security can lead to severe consequences such as hefty fines, product seizures or recalls, injunctions, and even imprisonment, depending on the severity of the crime.

Data Security & Encryption

To give you an idea of why patient privacy protection is so important, let’s say you, as a patient, have your patient’s health information stored in home care software. Now, when there is a leak in the software and your data is exposed, then imagine how many ways that data can be used. It not only compromises your fundamental right to privacy but can also lead to unethical healthcare practices.

And that is the reason why HIPAA compliance is necessary for your custom home healthcare software.

Some of the robust security measures that you can implement are secure encryptions which makes it difficult for data interpretation, access control to limit the access to data and firewalls to ensure a third-party cannot penetrate through your defenses.

Here are some of the best practices for data security that many home care practices uses:

• Role-Based Access Control and Authorization – To limit access to patient health data.

• Data Encryption – To protect data from unauthorized access when the data is at rest and in transit.

• Security Audits & Assessment – To identify vulnerabilities and address them.

Risk Assessment & Management

One of the major requirements of HIPAA for custom home healthcare software is conducting risk assessment and management. For instance, before implementing your custom home health care software you need to conduct a risk assessment to identify all the necessary vulnerabilities in your home care operations.

To comply with this, your custom home healthcare software will also generate certain data about its usage. Generating reports of this and identifying the risks and taking necessary measures to limit the damage can not only benefit your practice but also enhance the patient data security.

The best practice for risk management in home care settings is conducting regular security and complete software audits. This will give you a detailed report on the functioning of the software and its security. From this you can identify the risks and take necessary measures to address them proactively.

Employee Training & Education

The custom home healthcare software can be compliant with HIPAA, however, most of the security aspects of it also depend on its appropriate use as well. That is why HIPAA identifies training and education as an integral part of safeguarding patient health information (PHI).

With training and educating the users of your custom home healthcare software, they can know the software inside and how to use it effectively without compromising the security of the patient’s data. Furthermore, you can include some of the training features in the software itself, such as online modules, quizzes and certifications which the users can obtain before care delivery.

Apart from that, one of the best practices for employee training on HIPAA compliance is to give them extensive hands-on training with the software. This way, they not only get used to using the software but also know which features to access and which are not.

Business Associate Agreements (BAAs)

As a home care service provider, you would most likely work with healthcare IT vendors for the development and maintenance of your custom home healthcare software. This is where HIPAA asks you to sign Business Associate Agreements with your vendors. Since these vendors will also be having access to PHI, ensure that the BAA agreement outlines all the necessary obligations that are required to protect PHI.

This is not just limited to the vendors who will be involved in the custom home healthcare software development, but will also extend to the integrations you will be needing for your software such as Electronic Health Records and Telehealth platforms.

Here the same software you’ll be developing can come in handy. Since the vendor would have already signed the BAA, an extension of it can be present in the software which the integration partners can also access to comply with and can be easily managed from the software itself.

However, a keen attention to details must be given to the drafting of the BAA. As it acts as an agreement that defines your commitment to security and HIPAA compliance. The best practice while drafting BAAs involve having HIPAA requirements listed by your side and include all the necessary robust security measures that will ensure absolute safety of PHI.

Incident Response & Breach Notification

The internet is wide and there are several ways that one can breach the strongest security. Though it is easier said than done, it is always better to have a plan of action in place to respond to data breaches. The same is emphasized by the HIPAA as well.

Off-the-shelf home care software has a generic plan in place, whereas, your custom home healthcare software can help you with incident response and breach notification, as soon as it identifies one. Here a special attention to this must be given during its curation.

Furthermore, there is a Breach Notification Rule in place which requires all the covered entities and business associates to proactively inform the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) about a breach of unsecured protected health information. This is done to mitigate the damage by taking necessary action.

Frequently Asked Questions