Dangers of Running a Website that is Not HIPAA-Compliant

Introduction

Is your website safeguarding patients’ critical and personal health data? HIPAA compliance standards in web design and development ensures data privacy and security provisioning for safeguarding patients’ medical information.

If you own a business delivering healthcare services then you must be knowing this term. If not, then at least double-check whether your website is compliant with HIPAA compliance guidelines. In case you are merely a vendor catering to healthcare organizations, you have to ensure that your website is HIPAA-Compliant.

What is the HIPAA Compliance Act?

HIPAA (known as Public Law 104-191) stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which came to life on August 21, 1996, and has been considered a federal law overriding state laws since then.

Due to cyber-attacks and data breaches, HIPAA compliance requirements are mandatory for any website dealing with the data on Patient Health Information (PHI).

HIPAA compliance standards shall be considered by all the website development project stakeholders, including owners, administrators, and website developers.

In short, one can see the HIPAA compliance act as a law for three kinds of patient rights related to Patients’ Health Information (PHI): Right to privacy, security, and notification in the case of a breach in PHI. This is to prevent the maligned usage and disclosure of PHI without the respective patient’s consent.

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Does Healthcare HIPAA Compliance Apply to Your Healthcare Business Website?

You can find out the details and see for yourself if your healthcare web solution needs to be HIPAA-Compliant.

The fact is that not every healthcare business website needs to be HIPAA-Compliant. Ideally, HIPAA compliance standards apply to covered entities and their business associates. There may be some websites falling into the latter category of business associates. However, it totally depends on what offerings they deliver to any healthcare organization.

Covered Entities Include the following:

• Healthcare Providers (Doctors, Dentists, General Clinics, Hospitals)

• Insurance Companies

• Healthcare ClearingHouses that store healthcare data

See for yourself, why all of the businesses need healthcare HIPAA compliance solutions in this industry.

Healthcare Providers

• Those who provide information related to health, vision, dental health, and prescription drug coverage.

• Those offering Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare + Choice, and Medicare supplement policies.

• Companies providing long-term coverage for care. These exclude nursing home fixed-indemnity plans.

HIPAA rules and compliance also applies to Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). Employers, Government Agencies, and Churches sponsoring health plans must follow HIPAA regulations whatsoever.

Business Associates

These are the entities that work externally out of the ecosystem of organizations falling under covered entities. However, depending on the case, they may use or share PHI data to perform actions on behalf of the covered entities. The possible activities are outlined below for better understanding:

• Claims processing

• Data analysis

• Utilization review

• Billing

In common terms, this combined list includes the following real-world businesses. However, the complete list is not limited to these only:

• Hospitals and healthcare centers

• Hospitals and healthcare centers

• Physiotherapists

• Pharmacies

• Medical equipment vendors

• Healthcare IT providers

• Health insurance companies

• Accounting firms serving healthcare providers

• Medical transcription providers

Are you related to any of the aforementioned entities? Then your website must be HIPAA-Compliant.

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What are the Penalties if a Website is Not HIPAA-Compliant?

To ensure you’re complying with HIPAA, ask yourself these questions:

• Are you collecting PHI via your website?

• Are you transmitting PHI through your website?

• Are you storing PHI on a server on your website?

If the answer to any of these three questions is YES, then you must follow HIPAA compliance guidelines if your website is not compliant with HIPAA standards. Let us see the dangers if a business fails to meet HIPAA regulations.

Whether you are a covered entity, business associate, or even working for any of them, there are severe consequences for not complying with HIPAA regulations.

According to HIPAA Journal, the severity of penalties directly depends on single or multiple breaches outlined below:

1. The nature of the violation.

2. Whether there was knowledge that HIPAA Rules were being violated, or by exercising due diligence, it should have been clear that HIPAA Rules were being violated.

3. Whether an action was taken to correct the violation.

4. Whether there was malicious intent or HIPAA Rules were violated for personal gain.

5. The harm caused by the violation(s).

6. The number of people impacted by the violation.

7. Whether there was a violation of the criminal provision of HIPAA.

These could determine the imposing of Civil charges and Criminal charges.

Civil Penalties for HIPAA Violations

These factors could lead to Civil penalties which could be imposed on Covered Entities and Business Associates by HHS’s Office for civil rights regardless of data breach or disclosing PHI data.

As of January 2023, Financial Civil penalties for HIPAA violations can be as little as $127 per violation, but rise up to a staggering fine of $1,919,173 when a violation is attributable to wishful ignorance and not corrected within 30 days.

Criminal Penalties for HIPAA Violations

Penalties for criminal HIPAA violations could be imposed if an individual employee or organization is found guilty of disclosing PHI data wrongfully and knowingly.

• Based on the severity of criminal violations, the fine could be between $50,000-$250,000.

• The victims will have to be compensated for their troubles and losses.

• There could be a possible jail cell for the given period of time.

Penalty Tiers for Imprisonment:

• Negligence to comply is a criminal violation and could result in life in a jail cell for 12 months.

• Gaining protected health data under falsification could result in a maximum of 5 years in prison.

• Willingly disclosing critical PHI with bad intent for personal/commercial gains could extend your prison term up to 10 years.

• For identity theft, a mandatory 2-year prison period is imposed according to the rule books.

Fearful and terrible penalties, isn’t it? What you do now could be a make or break for your healthcare business.

Also Read – Cloud Computing for Healthcare – Must Known Things

So, How to Identify if Your Website is HIPAA-Compliant or Not?

You can consult with a top web design and development company to audit your website thoroughly and make necessary modifications. They would know how to protect the storing and accessing of the critical information of your patients and clientele.

However, there exists a HIPAA compliance checklist of guidelines to develop healthcare HIPAA compliance websites. These may be not all but represents the majority of the points to be covered for ensuring the privacy and security of PHI.

1. SSL Protection

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection, now commonly known as TLS (Transport Layer Security), is a cryptographic protocol used to secure communications over a computer network. It provides encryption and authentication to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of data transmitted between a client (such as a web browser) and a server (such as a website).

This ensures that the client is accessing the information and sending requests to a trusted server via your website, hence preventing impersonation or tampering from hackers.

2. Full Data Encryption

SSL deals with user encryption and server encryption, your website also requires stored data encryption. It helps in creating a secured and encrypted user-server communication environment so that nothing is readable even if someone intercepts the transmitted data.

3. Full Data Backup

Apparently, if your backup storage security is flawed then you are not following the HIPAA compliance guidelines. Ideally, the scenario should be that only one person should be able to view all the information in the process of submitting on your website. Who? You guessed it right. It must be the user who is submitting the details.

Once you have that information submitted, you have got to store and encrypt the critical and personal information.

4. Deleting “Permanent” Data

Permanent means forever. And this is what healthcare industry-related businesses must do. Whenever a client or patient is ending an engagement with your business, you must delete every piece of information about that individual from your servers. HIPAA mandates the deletion of all irrelevant data which is no longer related to your organization.

It’s that simple! No opportunity whatsoever to recover the deleted information. Failure to follow this could lead to penalties when found guilty.

5. Restricted Access

We all know whenever we read the phrase “Restricted Access”, that only the website administrators could access it. This should follow in all the possible cases where no one else could access the information underneath. Only admins could make the changes to the website. It is similar to the scenario above where we learned that only the user can access his or her information.

Any minor change, even to a user’s profile by someone else, results in a breach of the HIPAA rules.

6. Regular Password Change Requests

Regularly notifying the users to change their passwords is normally a good security practice. But with HIPAA security compliance standards, doing this is a law. Your website must regulate and notify the admins and users using your platform to change their passwords.

If your website fails to perform that tiny little action from your end, it means you are breaching the HIPAA standards.

7. Establishing a Contingency Plan in Case of a Breach

If you have a contingency plan in place, whenever a data breach occurs, you can quickly neutralize it. This increases the reliability among users of your website and showcases that it is robust in terms of security.

8. Appoint a HIPAA-Compliant Officer

Select or hire someone who knows inside-out of updated HIPAA policies, rules, regulations, and penalties. Someone who could take care of your website’s compliance with HIPAA regulations at all times.

Failure to appoint one will result in missing critical information on HIPAA policy updates and will make your website fall short of HIPAA compliance.

9. Publish Your Allegiance to HIPAA Compliance on Your Website

It is always rewarding, directly or indirectly, to publish your HIPAA compliance on your own website. Go on, publish it, and make your users know that you take care of their data and give them control over it. Make them know that you follow all the rules and guidelines which make their information secure.

10. HIPAA Business Associate Agreement with Site Host

If you are a business associate with a HIPAA-Compliant website, you must share the business associate agreement with your vendors. You can find the business associate agreement provisions here. This also includes the host of your website.

This is why a lot of site hosts, in normal cases, hesitate to work with HIPAA-Compliant websites to avoid problems. Of course, HIPAA-Compliant websites require a lot more work, effort, regulations, and budget compared to standard websites.

However, you need one with your host in order to succeed in the long run.

Verdict: Be Compliant, Stay Compliant

In the healthcare web design or web development project, you and your web developers have to be fully aware about the importance of PHI security. Every single time it is collected, stored, and transmitted for true purposes, it satisfies all the security layers to ensure optimum HIPAA security compliance with a contingency plan.

What are the Benefits of HIPAA Compliance?

To end the discussion on a good note, please find the summary of a range of benefits HIPAA compliance could bring to your business in the healthcare industry.

• 24×7 encrypted data

• Secure & customizable access controls

• Legal and regulatory

• Helps build patient trust and confidence

• Gives competitive-edge

• Secure lead capture forms

• Minimized reputation and financial risks

• Better interoperability

It’s important to note that achieving and maintaining HIPAA compliance is an ongoing process that requires continuous effort, periodic risk assessments, staff training, and staying updated with evolving regulations.

In the end, always remember that compliance extends beyond the website itself and encompasses all aspects of an organization’s handling of PHI.

Love and respect your patients’ privacy to stay compliant. They deserve it and that’s all you need to do!

How Bytes Technolab Can Help You?

We are a leading website and web application development company since 2011 to have helped diverse healthcare businesses in the USA to build HIPAA-compliant solutions. Our clients for whom we have developed HIPAA-compliant websites include healthcare and medical equipment vendors, healthcare accessories vendors, healthcare providers, and pharmacies.

Not only do we develop HIPAA-compliant solutions for healthcare organizations, but we also help those in the USA who want to audit their websites for such compliances related to HIPAA, WCAG, ADA.

If you belong to a similar industry and business and are skeptical, contact our web experts to do the audit now before it’s too late. We have got web design, consulting, and development teams in the locker ready to deliver an elegant and secure HIPAA-compliant website and web apps.