HIPAA Compliance Checklist 2024/2025: PHI Storage & Transfer
To help you navigate the complexities of healthcare data management, we've developed The Complete HIPAA Checklist: Compliance for Healthcare Providers & Business Associates in 2024/2025.
This comprehensive ebook offers a full overview of HIPAA regulations, and step-by-step guidance to ensure your healthcare organization stays compliant and prepared.
Download the Complete HIPAA Checklist for 2024/2025 and take the next step towards securing your organization’s future. From staff training, to managing workstations, to breach response—it's got absolutely everything you need to know condensed into a practical and interactive checklist. It’s free, so download it.
The following checklist will cover HIPAA compliant data transfer and storage, including BA management, but we strongly recommend our ebook if you’re looking for a comprehensive HIPAA compliance checklist.
How does HIPAA impact BA management in healthcare?
No matter where in the healthcare industry your business fits, it’s likely that collaborating and sharing information with business associates (BAs) is an unavoidable part of your daily workflow.
These third parties provide vital services that often involve accessing, moving, and storing Protected Health Information (PHI). Your BA network may include IT services, billing companies, cloud storage providers, other healthcare service providers, and plenty more.
The HIPAA framework requires covered entities to sign business associate agreements with all BAs. It also mandates regular assessments, training, and the use of secure data transfer and storage solutions, such as SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS, and S3, to ensure ongoing compliance, and to mitigate the risks associated with data breaches.
Even with all your other HIPAA points in check, failure to manage BAs correctly can spell disaster for your compliance efforts. Managing these data-sharing relationships and ensuring secure integrations with third parties is a primary color in the spectrum of HIPAA compliance.
HIPAA checklist for compliant data storage and transfer
Here’s a practical checklist to help you ensure HIPAA compliance in your data transfer and storage activities, as well as in managing your BAs.
For HIPAA-compliant data storage and transfer, you’ll need to take measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information (ePHI). This includes using secure protocols, encryption, access controls, and regular audits.
Key components of HIPAA compliant storage and transfer:
- Encryption: Encrypt data both in transit and at rest to protect ePHI.
- Access controls: Implement strict access controls to ensure only authorized individuals can access ePHI.
- Audit controls: Maintain logs of access and activity related to ePHI to monitor and detect unauthorized access.
- Secure transfer protocols: Use secure transfer protocols such as SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS, and S3.
- Business associate agreements (BAAs): Ensure all business associates sign BAAs to safeguard PHI and comply with HIPAA while your PHI is in their hands.
1. Sign business associate agreements (BAAs)
- Ensure that all business associates sign BAAs specifying their responsibilities and compliance obligations.
- Read this.
2. Use secure transfer and storage solutions
- Implement secure protocols like SFTP, FTPS, HTTPS, and S3 for safe data transfer and storage. Solutions like SFTP To Go offer HIPAA-compliant options with BAAs available at signup.
- Read this.
3. Encryption and access controls
- Encrypt ePHI during transfer and at rest. Implement access controls to ensure only authorized individuals can access ePHI.
- Read this.
4. Initial and regular assessments
- Evaluate business associates initially and periodically to ensure they adhere to the BAA and HIPAA regulations.
- Read this.
5. Training and awareness
- Ensure both your staff and the BA’s staff understand HIPAA requirements and the specifics of your BAA.
- Read this.
6. Maintain audit controls
- Keep detailed logs of access and activity related to ePHI to monitor and detect unauthorized access.
- Read this.
7. Monitor access logs
- Regularly review access logs to ensure only authorized personnel are accessing ePHI.
- Read this.
8. Establish incident response procedures
- Develop and implement procedures to handle security incidents, including detection, response, documentation, and reporting.
- Read this.
9. Ensure data integrity
- Implement policies to protect ePHI from improper alteration or destruction, including data validation and integrity checks.
- Read this.
10. Plan for breach notification
- Establish procedures for breach reporting, including internal and external reporting requirements.
- Read this.
A number of these boxes can be checked with the help of solutions like SFTP To Go, which bridges the gap between you and your BAs with secure PHI data transfer and storage.
SFTP To Go also offers a BAA at sign up, access controls, audit logs, PHI data encryption in transit and at rest, as well as HIPAA compliant secure protocols for both file transfer and cloud storage.
In conclusion
The checklist above will help you ensure that your data transfer and storage practices are HIPAA compliant. However, HIPAA is a broad set of requirements encompassing numerous rules, standards, and subparts, becoming even more convoluted with the scale of your enterprise.
So, to check all of the HIPAA boxes, and for a comprehensive guide covering all aspects of HIPAA compliance, download our e-book, "The Complete HIPAA Checklist: Compliance For Healthcare Providers & BAs In 2024/2025"
Why use our ebook? We’ve taken the time to clarify the lengthy and lofty language of HIPAA into a manageable interactive guide that will, we hope, be leagues easier to navigate and complete. Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The Purpose of HIPAA Regulations and HIPAA Compliance: A quick introduction to why HIPAA exists and how it benefits you and your clients.
- Glossary of HIPAA Terms: Definitions of key terms to help you understand the language of HIPAA.
- Managing Business Associates, BAAs, And Data: Strategies for managing and integrating with business associates and data handling to ensure compliance.
- HIPAA Rules Breakdown: Detailed explanations of the five main HIPAA rules – Privacy Rule, Security Rule, Breach Notification Rule, Enforcement Rule, and Transactions and Code Sets Rule. Each rule is broken down into key requirements, leaving no stone unturned.
- Comprehensive HIPAA Compliance Checklist: A practical, interactive checklist that consolidates all the HIPAA rule requirements into actionable items.
This e-book offers a complete breakdown of HIPAA rules, detailed HIPAA requirements, and IT condenses the whole of HIPAA into an interactive list of practical steps to achieve and maintain compliance.