patient portal hipaa compliance

What are the requirements for HIPAA compliance?

Sep 09, 2019 · Patient Portals and the HIPAA Security Rule Healthcare providers frequently allow patients to access their electronic health records (EHRs) through a patient portal. Online patient portals allow patients to view their medical records, schedule appointments, and even request refills of prescriptions, anywhere the patient has access to the Internet.

What are HIPAA patient rights?

Mar 23, 2020 · If you have a patient portal developed, provided by, or on behalf of a covered entity (health plan, healthcare clearinghouses, or healthcare providers), it must be HIPAA compliant. If you are a business associate that stores, collects, processes, or transmits PHI on behalf of covered entities, your patient portal must be HIPAA compliant.

Are patient portals required?

Oct 12, 2018 · A HIPAA compliant client portal must secure patient information – which is why a custom HIPAA compliant portal can be an especially delicate prospect. Below, we explore a recent request our sales team received for such a portal, and how to go about meeting the requirements for a HIPAA compliant client portal.

What is HIPAA log?

Jul 18, 2021 · Bridge is a leading HIPAA-compliant and ONC-certified patient portal solution that can integrate seamlessly with any existing EHR. It offers a comprehensive selection of features including patient registration, appointment scheduling, secure messaging, bill management, and access to medical records.

Is Facebook portal HIPAA compliant?

Conclusion: Facebook is not HIPAA compliant because it will not sign a BAA. However, covered entities can use it—as long as they do not share any PHI.Jul 1, 2020

What safeguards are included in patient portals?

Patient portals have privacy and security safeguards in place to protect your health information. To make sure that your private health information is safe from unauthorized access, patient portals are hosted on a secure connection and accessed via an encrypted, password-protected logon.

Are patient portals HIPAA compliant?

Patient healthcare portals help medical practices adhere to HIPAA regulations both by providing patients with easy access to their medical records and by using security measures to protect those records.

Are patient portals confidential?

(a) Patient Portal is intended as a secure online means for you to access your confidential medical record information. ... Patient Portal is protected using industry standard security measures.Oct 29, 2013

How do you secure a patient portal?

Here are five ways organizations can bring their patient portal security up-to-date and keep their networks safe from unauthorized access:Portal sign-up process should be automated. ... Keep anti-virus and malware software up to date. ... Multifactor verification is a must. ... Protect patient identities with identity solutions.More items...•Mar 20, 2020

What are some of the differences between a patient portal and a PHR?

The Portal is controlled by the source system (EMR/EHR/Hospital). On the other hand, the Personal Health Record (PHR) is more patient centric, is controlled by a patient or family member, and may or may not be connected to a doctor or hospital (i.e. it may be tethered or untethered).Sep 6, 2012

How do you use patient portals?

If your provider offers a patient portal, you will need a computer and internet connection to use it. Follow the instructions to register for an account. Once you are in your patient portal, you can click the links to perform basic tasks. You can also communicate with your provider's office in the message center.Aug 13, 2020

What are the disadvantages of a patient portal?

Even though they should improve communication, there are also disadvantages to patient portals....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.Nov 11, 2021

What are the pros and cons of patient portals?

What are the Top Pros and Cons of Adopting Patient Portals?Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients.Con: Healthcare data security concerns.Pro: More complete and accurate patient information.Con: Difficult patient buy-in.Pro: Increased patient ownership of their own care.Feb 17, 2016

What is HIPAA Privacy?

What Is HIPAA? The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects patients’ privacy by limiting access to PHI (Protected Health Information) and governing acceptable use of their health data. The HIPAA Privacy Rule is composed of national regulations for the use and disclosure of PHI in healthcare treatment, payment, ...

Who is Kirsty from Bridge Patient Portal?

Community Manager at Bridge Patient Portal. Kirsty is an experienced marketer with a demonstrated history of working in the medical and software industry. She is skilled in digital marketing, including SEO copywriting. Kirsty marries her passion for healthcare with her experience in digital marketing.

What is protected health information?

Protected Health Information (PHI) is any information that is held by a covered entity regarding a patient’s health status, provision of health care, or health care payment.

How to protect PHI?

The Security Rule dictates that there should be protections in place physically, technically, and administratively so that electronic PHI is kept safe. Healthcare plans, providers, and clearinghouses have to do the following: 1 Make sure that all the protected health data they create, store, receive, or send is available, uncorrupted, and kept private. 2 Locate and set up defenses against any elements of the environment that could sabotage the integrity or security of data. 3 Set up protections so that uses or disclosures that are foreseeable and are not allowed under the law do not occur. 4 Make sure that everyone on staff stays compliant with HIPAA.

What is a healthcare professional?

A healthcare professional was researching a client portal solution for her organization. She was setting up a one-stop shop for each of the client facilities through which all users could access a shared docs area, a secure document portal, a navigation area for online resources, and other tools. The executive wanted to build a system that would include content/version management and that could reflect any modifications immediately across several different sites.

Is cloud computing HIPAA compliant?

The HHS considers the use of cloud solutions for the processing and storing of electronic protected health information (i.e. to build any solutions that you need to be HIPAA-compliant) with cloud components as HIPAA-compliant.

1. Epic

Ranking Best in KLAS for the fourth year running, Epic System’s MyChart patient portal is a leader in this space. Epic’s MyChart allows patients easy access to personal and family health information, with the ability to schedule appointments, securely message their doctor and attend e-visits.

2. athenahealth

athenahealth, recently awarded 2020 Best in KLAS: Small Practice Ambulatory EMR/PM, offers healthcare providers a cloud-based platform for managing electronic health records (EHR), telehealth, care coordination, patient engagement, and medical billing.

3. Mend

Mend delivers a complete cloud-based telehealth and patient engagement platform to medium and large healthcare organizations. Individuals and smaller practices may also take advantage of the platform via a free option which offers limited features.

4. Ambra Health

Ambra Health is an award-winning, cloud-based medical data and image management suite. Ambra Health offers an easy-to-use patient portal, replacing CDs as the traditional and less secure means of image sharing. This platform can also be easily integrated with other popular EHR systems, including athenahealth.

5. Elation Health EHR

Elation Health’s cloud-based and ONC certified EHR platform delivers a clinical-first patient management solution. Their patient passport allows access to secure messaging, doctor’s notes, and medical information.

6. TheraNest

TheraNest provides a web-based mental health practice management platform that is fully HIPAA-compliant. Patients can access an efficient portal, allowing them to complete and sign intake forms, build custom forms, schedule appointments, manage their bills, and exchange HIPAA-compliant messages with their physician.

7. Bridge

Bridge is a leading HIPAA-compliant and ONC-certified patient portal solution that can integrate seamlessly with any existing EHR. It offers a comprehensive selection of features including patient registration, appointment scheduling, secure messaging, bill management, and access to medical records.

What are the challenges of implementing HIPAA compliant patient portals?

The challenges of implementing HIPAA compliant patient portals depend on a provider's IT infrastructure and its operating system's complexity and interoperability. There are also the legal and regulatory requirements that include meeting mandatory HIPAA guidelines and voluntary best practices. The challenges of HIPAA compliant portal development include:

What are patient portals?

Patient portals generate many associated mandatory and medical compliance issues. Practices must consider their business associates and chain-of-trust issues that arise when sending information by electronic transmission. Medical companies deal with insurance companies, Internet service providers, labs, pharmacies, billing and coding services, hospitals and other practices across different medical-related specialties.

What is the HIPAA Privacy Rule?

The HIPAA Privacy Rule gives patients the right to obtain copies of their medical records, treatments and protected health information or PHI. These requirements go further if medical providers want to receive reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid -- patients must be able to access their records online, download copies and transmit the information to third-party providers. Most medical practices are finding it necessary to develop patient portals where patients and physicians can interact, share information and perform important functions such as practices billing patients and accepting payments online. HIPAA standards rule requires that these patient portals have strong security and privacy protections to prevent unauthorized access of these confidential PHI records.

How do portals benefit patients?

The benefits of patient portals increase exponentially with each patient who uses one, so encouraging patients and their families to use the portals can strengthen the cost-value and time-saving advantages of the technology. Surveys show that medical practices can optimize portal use by engaging Millennials and Baby Boomers to meet Stage 2 Medicare/Medicaid requirements, but these campaigns can work effectively for all patients. [3] Business concerns necessarily impact each medical practice, but decision-makers can enhance the benefits of adopting patient portals with strong campaigns to encourage patient use. Best practices for optimizing patient use include:

What stakeholders are involved in developing a patient portal?

These include the practice's senior leadership, patient advocates in the community, risk management stakeholders like insurers and legal counsel, physicians and clinicians and marketing staffs and health information management professionals who need to sell the benefits of using the patient portal to patients, caregivers and even some staff members who might hesitate to interact with patients electronically. Patient portals enhance communications, and sounding out these stakeholders is essential for developing an effective portal because each will be using the technology at ever-increasing rates.

Secure & HIPAA Compliant Patient Portals

The chief consideration in patient portal design is security. If your patient portals are not secure, you run the risk of failing to maintain HIPAA compliance, which can put your whole practice in jeopardy. Clarity has a standard way in which we maintain HIPAA compliance within our patient portals.

Patient Portal Design Considerations

Remember: while your patient portal can speed up many important processes and make the patient much happier, it should never replace the personal attention of a healthcare practitioner.

Selecting Your Patient Portal Vendors

As you look into patient portal vendors, consider not just the development aspects but also the “human” aspects of a company’s role in your patient portal design. A good patient portal vendor or developer will be able to intuit your patient’s unique needs and provide a design to suit them.

What are the obligations of HIPAA?

HIPAA lays out, in very clear terms, the obligations of healthcare providers when it comes to the security of medical data. Not only must providers take care to put security measures in place, they also have a clear obligation to do the following things if there’s a breach: 1 They must advise all patients that there has been a security breach. 2 They must advise the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of the breach. 3 If the breach has affected more than 500 people in a state or jurisdiction, they must advise the media of the breach to ensure all patients know about it.

Who is Katie Heno?

Katie co-founded HENO based on her career as a physical therapist and practice owner of over 10 years. Her understanding of the pain points many practice owners face has equipped her to create practice management solutions that optimize the efficiency and profitability of physical, speech and occupational therapy clinics.