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In a previous era, when a primary physician might live in the same neighborhood as their patients and care for families across multiple generations with only paper charts and records, “patient privacy” was a much simpler idea.
Today, however, a patient’s clinical or lab results may be shared immediately with their team of specialists via electronic health records. They may fill a prescription written by a provider they met once during a video telehealth visit. In addition, both patients and providers likely keep track of care (e.g., visit notes, current medications, reminders, etc.) through a digital patient portal.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) became law in 1996 with this technological future in mind, which is why ensuring HIPAA compliance is such an essential part of modern health and human services.
Before discussing the benefits of HIPAA-compliant patient CRM systems, it’s important to understand what HIPAA is and why it matters. It’s designed to ensure the confidentiality of private health information (PHI), enabling providers to communicate about patients as needed and appropriate, while safeguarding sensitive information from other parties. Compliance is crucial for ensuring privacy and security, maintaining patient trust, and avoiding legal risks.
With that in mind, HIPAA-compliant patient CRM systems benefit patients and businesses alike by ensuring patient data protection while enhancing patient engagement. But what should biotech and pharmaceutical companies look for when selecting the right HIPAA-compliant patient software?
HIPAA was passed to prepare for today’s reliance on electronic record storage, delivery systems, and processes.
This regulation aims to keep electronic protected health information private and secure by establishing rules for healthcare providers and business associates accessing patient health records. From 2009 to 2020, more than 176 million patients in the US were impacted by health information breaches, and the costs of these breaches—often the result of failing to comply with HIPAA regulations—are soaring.
Under HIPAA, healthcare organizations and any patient-related software must follow a few key rules, including:
. Here are just a few common misunderstandings about HIPAA:
Doctors aren’t prohibited from emailing patients; healthcare organizations and other health employees can share patient information with others besides the patient if it complies with HIPAA regulations. Additionally, patient information can sometimes be used for marketing with proper consent. These actions are possible if thorough risk assessments are conducted and business associates carefully manage HIPAA compliance.
HIPAA exists to protect patient privacy. However, achieving compliance doesn’t need to be overly complex or hinder employees’ ability to perform their jobs effectively.
Modern HIPAA-compliant software solutions safeguard patient privacy while allowing efficient access to information and overall support for patient engagement to improve health outcomes. What’s more, investing in the right tools can simplify compliance efforts and streamline your overall operations.
HIPAA-compliant software is an essential tool for any biopharma company looking to efficiently, effectively, and compliantly engage and support patients and caregivers. (This includes those stakeholders, such as healthcare providers and healthcare organizations, that biopharma companies may be working with to help support the patient journey to start and stay on therapies.) Here are some key features as you evaluate patient-focused software solutions.
Data encryption at rest focuses on information stored in databases, while data encryption in transit protects any data being transferred between servers or networks. Since health data is frequently at rest and in transit, HIPAA-compliant patient software must take both seriously.
Secure access control systems are essential to HIPAA compliance. Keeping access to patient data organized, secure, and flexible will save time, resources, and organizational downtime.
Secure access is generally granted in one of three ways:
The right patient CRM—one purpose-built for life sciences—ensures HIPAA compliance by encrypting data and establishing clear mechanisms to determine who can access it and when.
HIPAA-compliant patient software should also provide ways to track and manage access to sensitive data. Audit trails record who accesses data, effectively keeping a log of which data has been viewed and by whom.
The monitoring features and tools help streamline compliance reporting processes and allow for the detection and prevention of unauthorized access. A purpose-built patient CRM software like Courier Health logs all user communications and activity in the platform (whether it’s phone calls, email, SMS (text), or fax messages) for compliance purposes.
This audit trail makes it easier for compliance teams to understand how information is being used and identify possible root causes if an issue arises. Whether sensitive patient data has been exposed accidentally or healthcare records accessed by staff uninvolved with the relevant patients, with intelligent data privacy and security tools built-in, abnormal occurrences can be detected – and remedied – more quickly.
Poor access control results in business associates lacking awareness of who is accessing healthcare data and when—a challenge that is much more likely to occur when teams operate out of multiple systems or use manual workarounds (like spreadsheets) to track patient information.
While permissions vary by organization, the standard practice is to limit access to data based on roles or attributes rather than individual identities. (Within healthcare, as one example, doctors may be able to view and update patient records, while nurses can only view them.)
As you evaluate HIPAA-compliant software to manage the patient experience and store sensitive patient information, you’ll want to look for a robust solution that offers sophisticated, tailored approaches to role-based permissions.
Courier Health’s HIPAA-compliant CRM offers advanced role-based access (RBAC) permissions to ensure that specific roles within an organization can view and edit patient information, depending on the program’s unique team structure and program set up. This includes functionality to automatically obfuscate PHI if a user role isn't patient-facing, providing the right level of visibility while ensuring compliance.
This takes the guesswork out of compliant coordination by automatically providing the right level of information based on user roles. Additional features ensure that only admins can make changes (to business rules, templates, etc.) to ensure compliant messaging.
The reality today is that no organization is immune from data breaches or emergencies, so any system should have robust backup and emergency recovery plans in place. Frequent backups and secure storage of backup data will help organizations to act quickly to protect data if and when something goes wrong.
In addition, here are a few other elements to consider when evaluating and selecting patient software.
It goes without saying that HIPAA compliance checklists for vendor partners should include confirming relevant certifications or compliance attestations. Look for software that has performed third-party audits and assessments, which can provide additional reassurance.
HIPAA-compliant software companies should attest to their compliance, explain their steps to ensure compliance and cite the resources and organizations that have certified their practices.
Life sciences is a complex industry that requires deep focus and expertise, so it’s important to select a vendor that understands—and develops for—the industry’s nuances. This includes a strong track record of industry-specific past success and user satisfaction.
Find out how much experience a vendor already has working with sensitive patient data and whether they understand the complexities of the end-to-end patient journey and HIPAA compliance.
Software vendors should be able to answer questions about other industry clients and the different patient-facing and non-patient-facing roles already being used in the systems. See if safeguards are already built into the system to prevent PHI from being exposed during a breach.
What levels of expertise are available from user-facing associates? What are the response times you might expect when and if problems arise? Customer support is another way that certain vendors may distinguish themselves from competitors.
Technology systems that enable patient-centricity are worth investing in, but to ensure long-term success, you need a flexible system that will scale alongside your organization (e.g., launching more products, adding more users, entering new markets, etc.)
The right HIPAA-compliant patient software will also need to integrate with legacy systems to synchronize EHRs and data from HUBs, SPs, payors, and more.
Ask about the past and future implications of what the software can do:
When selecting HIPAA-compliant patient software, keep organizational and patient needs in mind. Look for security, flexibility, and a track record of success to better guarantee HIPAA compliance.
Make strategic investments now to ensure a seamless, secure, patient-centric experience in the future that is agile and responsive to changing patient and industry needs.
Ready to start using the only purpose-built patient CRM for life sciences? Contact Courier Health and begin the conversation today.
True patient-centricity. Everyone says it, but few deliver. Upgrade your patient experience with Courier Health.
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