HIPAA and HITECH Compliance

If you create, transmit, receive, or store electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI), then you need to be HIPAA Compliant. So...What is HIPAA and the HITECH Act?

When private medical records are breached, healthcare service providers suffer damage to their brand, reputation, loss of trust from their patients, and severe financial repercussions. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) mandates that appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards be used to protect the privacy and security of sensitive health information. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act signed into law February 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) clarifies and supplements HIPAA requirements, particularly by raising the financial penalties incurred by covered entities that violate the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. Both HIPAA and the HITECH Act are enforced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

How does Lexicon IT Security Help?

Lexicon IT Security helps organizations that handle sensitive patient information achieve HIPAA compliance, including medical schools, hospitals and their business associates, private labs, and insurance companies. Our solutions for healthcare services meet the Protected Health Information (PHI) safeguards required to achieve HIPAA compliance in accordance with relevant sections of §164.308 to §164.316 of the HIPAA Security Rule.

Here's how Lexicon IT Security prepares you for a HIPAA audit while providing sound vulnerability management practices that ensure that your entire infrastructure is protected from intruders:

Lexicon IT Security helps you comply with sections of §164.308 to §164.316 of the HIPAA Security Rule. Lexicon IT Security can help your business achieve HIPAA compliance by:

• Defining policies and procedures to secure protected health information.
• Provide online HIPAA Security Training to provide staff with knowledge needed to secure PHI from electronic, physical and behavioral challenges that put data at risks.
• Automating HIPAA audit requirements with pre-configured HIPAA compliance scanning and reporting with Lexicon for the broadest, deepest and most accurate vulnerability management solution so you can find vulnerabilities other scanners miss.
• Providing both executive HIPAA summary reports for management and detailed HIPAA remediation plan for security administrators.
• Performing internal scanning of your entire infrastructure with our tool set in preparation for HIPAA audits by evaluating potential security risks to electronic PHI, including monitoring of system activity for vulnerability and patch status on devices with PHI.
• Performing asset discovery, vulnerability detection, event management and compliance reporting on workstations, as well as automated monitoring of passwords policies with the customized policy compliance framework.

Performing external scanning with Lexicon either using distributed engines to detect and close any holes in your network perimeter.

With Lexicon IT Security, our HIPAA Compliance Services staff can perform internal and external vulnerability scans as part of your HIPAA risk assessment, and provide healthcare providers with documentation on their current security posture in accordance with HIPAA audit standards.

Contact us at WWW.LEXICONIT.COM to find out more about how Lexicon IT Security can help you achieve HIPAA compliance so you can avoid costly data breach penalties faced by HIPAA violators, and secure personally identifiable patient PHI.