Reach HIPAA compliance with Online Online Backup Professional backup services can help medical service providers reach HIPAA compliance for secure off-site storage of electronic records.

HIPAA background
In 1996, Congress enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The legislative goals of HIPAA were to mandate the industry to implement procedures to reduce the administrative costs of healthcare, develop standard transactions for consistency in the industry, promote security and confidentiality of patient records and to provide incentive for the healthcare industry to use electronic communications to make patient records available no matter where the patient was being treated - a process that takes days with manual records - and is particularly useful in emergencies.

All health care providers, insurance providers, health care clearinghouses or health plans that electronically maintains or transmits health information pertaining to an individual must comply with HIPAA regulations. Failure to comply with the Act's requirements originally had some onerous penalties for disclosure of any element of medical information to sources without need, such as a clerk inadvertently faxing some record to the wrong fax number, would have had both financial and incarceration involved. These penalties have been reduced by interpretation by the Secretary of HHS, who was chartered by the Act to develop the compliance guidelines.

The Act, as passed by Congress, set 1998 as the start date for compliance, but the pace with which the Federal Bureaucracy operates has delayed the start date to April 21, 2005. All in the healthcare industry are now preparing to comply with the Act.

HIPAA contingency planning
By using the an online data backup service, a medical practice or medical information chain participant has a chance to reach HIPAA compliance. According to the latest rules published as of February 1, 2003, online backup complies with the following HIPAA requirements:

• Offsite data storage outside of the organization
• User authentication
• Role based access
• Encryption of data (DES 448 bit encryption)
• Secure storage facilities
• Transmission reports
• Off-site data backup contingency plan

Overview
HIPAA requires those in the healthcare industry to have an off-site, encrypted remote electronic data backup and a contingency plan to meet the mandated Administrative Procedures in the Act. Every practitioner, be they doctor, clinic, hospital, testing lab, surgery center, or any of the other organization that provides services to individuals and stores patient medical records, must backup to a secure, encrypted (for privacy) off-site location each day. By using our service, a healthcare industry participant will be one step closer to compliance with HIPAA.

Online data backup service provides core data backup and recovery services to the healthcare industry. Online data backup service provides the practitioner assurance that the stored data is encrypted for privacy and will ease ones compliance with the Act by insuring that the practitioner has a secure data backup solution with automatic backups for data storage and recovery. We can also help prepare a written data backup plan for the Act's requirements and assist in preparing contingency plans.