HIPAA Compliant Security

Privacy, Privacy, Privacy

It’s hard for many of us to remember what the days before HIPAA were like, when access to peoples’ health info was fair game for just about anyone. Medical and dental offices may grumble about the complications HIPAA added to their practices, but it was obviously a law whose time had come.

There are many aspects to the original rules, as well as those added through HITECH and Omnibus (and whatever comes next...) – our intent is to make sure that any of the requirements that apply to the medical forms on your website are followed to the letter.

There are two areas where agencies can get into HIPAA trouble – unsecured medical forms and email. If all you provide are non-submittable PDF forms on your website, there’s no privacy issue. If, however, you opt for the convenience and speed of online forms, they must follow a rigid set of rules set forth by HIPAA.

To begin with, they must reside on a secure URL (one starting with https) – this assures the users that they are in fact on your website and not filling out a renegade form that’s attempting to capture their data. Next, the form should submit the user’s entries in an encrypted format, directly to a secure server. Please note that regular email is not a secure way to send anything. And even if you employ secure email for form submittal, there are a host of conditions to fulfill regarding the way you store this info.

Our Secure Forms Program provides a fully HIPAA-compliant method of form submission, storage and retrieval. We know of no other way to shortcut this procedure and still be compliant.