Does the cloud provide an easier route to HIPAA compliance?

March 5, 2013 - PRLog -- A lot of confusion has been raised regarding the compliance of cloud to the HIPAA. On the contrary, the healthcare community itself is not very sure of it and is looking at it as a double edged sword. The cloud presents you a shimmering picture of cost-effective option. It provides you a solution due to which analyzing massive data and the ability to store will become affordable. But the other side seems be bleaker as there are many who are yet to come to terms with this new rule-set of HIPAA, especially those that are now part of the recently published HIPPA omnibus rule. It is better to dig deeper on this to understand instead of merely speculating on the fringes whether to migrate or not to the cloud?

The omnibus rule that was put forth in the last month has further tightened the grip of HIPAA on those who are entrusted with responsibility of protecting the health information.The rule also has increased penalty on the business associates and covered entities, who fail to comply with the HIPAA. At present, there a lot of misconceptions as well as fear regarding use of the cloud. As a result many healthcare organizations and health service providers are shying away from switching over to the cloud. Not taking rescue under the in the latest cloud technology umbrella might result in loss a good deal in terms of both compliance and finances for organizations that wish to play safe.

Can Cloud Computing Really Rescue Health Care And Make It HIPAA Compliant?

Recent times has revealed to the health care sector the various weird and amazing ways in which data breaches can occur and do occur. Many times it occurs due to infrastructure loss, physical theft, or due to sheer negligence (when someone forgets a laptop or forgets to shutdown their PC).

The above scenario of data exploitation and data theft is easily manageable through use of cloud technology. Cloud computing can be more helpful in such cases because herein you can stop the breaches by using services of physical security policies such as the Amazon wherein all the things that can be carried out with the data can be published. Cloud technology is most certainly is far more efficient than what a single group running its infrastructure can accomplish after a lot of personal investment. Of course, reduction in the amount of health data breach is the first benefit of cloud computing.

Deft monitoring of security and the privacy of the infrastructure through automation is the second benefit of cloud. Basically, when the infrastructure program is being written, the infrastructure is coded and thousands of tests are conducted on various levels. Such through levels of tested programs provide a secure base that everything is done in order to automate the expected results and that the infrastructure automatically works the way in which you want it to. Hence, when things start showing changes in the infrastructure code you immediately smell smoke and try to find out the reason for it. Trying to search for the reason for changes in your infrastructure ultimately makes you provide more security to your data.

HIPAA omnibus rule has placed great emphasis on the factors that can risk the health data and the breach notifications. The cloud services developers provide you with the documentations that carry highly detailed processing systems due to which remaining HIPAA compliant as well as cost-efficient does not seem as uphill task. All the instructions that are part of the cloud computing program are written in plain and simple readable English which can be easily defined by anybody in the health business. This gives the HIPAA operators full knowledge about the compliance and non-compliance and related decision. It also helps even the non-technical staff to gain an insight into overall work pertaining to the HIPAA compliance owing to which the overall efficiency of an organization is certain to elevate.

Only six months are left for the covered entities and the partners to become HIPAA compliant and hence it is important that they take steps to understand these benefits of the new cloud computing.

Data breaches in health sector have been damaging the credibility of many health institutions and many times the culprits were left untracked as they were much smarter than the security system of the institutions. Shifting to the cloud is a major decision, which can be taken by the entities only when they thoroughly understand its contribution in lessening the burden of finance as well as maintaining to the strict rules of the HIPAA compliance.

One wonders, what is keeping these people at the fences when one way or the other they are not left with any other alternative than to migrate to the cloud!

About emPower
emPower  is a leading provider of comprehensive Healthcare Compliance Solutions through Learning Management System (LMS). Its mission is to provide innovative security solutions to enable compliance with applicable laws and regulations and maximize business performance. empower provides range of courses to manage compliance required by regulatory bodies such as OSHA, HIPAA, Joint commission and Red Flag Rule etc. Apart from this emPower also offers custom demos and tutorials for your website, business process management and software implementation.

Its Learning Management system (LMS) allows students to retrieve all the courses 24/7/365 by accessing the portal. emPower e-learning training program is an interactive mode of learning that guides students to progress at their own pace.

For additional information, please visit http://www.empowerbpo.com.