HIPAA omnibus rule

Learn about HIPAA secure communication requirements

The HIPAA Omnibus Rule, a set of final regulations modifying HIPAA’s Privacy, Security, and Enforcement Rules to implement various provisions of the HITECH Act, went into effect on March 26, 2013. Primarily, it focused on PHI and securing it in an increasingly digital world. Specifically, the omnibus HIPAA rule:

1. Increased PHI protection and control.
2. Strengthened PHI breach notification rules.
3. Expanded patient rights
4. Limited PHI use/disclosure for marketing and fundraising purposes.

To avoid HIPAA violations – and the hefty fines that accompany them - healthcare organizations have tightened security measures to ensure PHI stays and goes exactly where it should.

However, the resulting security barriers frequently stand in the way of providers being able to access, communicate and transact patient health information – all critical to the delivery of care. The result? An unsustainable tension between the security HIPAA and patients demand and the convenience and efficiency providers need to deliver quality care. A secure communications platform alleviates the tension.

Avoid HIPAA penalties, improve efficiency, and coordinate care with secure communication

A HIPAA-compliant communications platform needs to be a business associate and provide a BAA, mitigating HIPAA-violation risk by:

• Meeting HIPAA requirements while enabling your providers to communicate securely from personal or corporate-owned devices.
• Limiting PHI access to involved providers, which eliminates breaches.
• Replacing outdated and unsecure communications, such as paging, fax, and native SMS, with a solution that can deliver lab results, EKGs, wound photos, and other patient information easily and securely across care teams and organizations.

Secure communications improves communication efficiency by:

• Replacing inefficient communication technologies such as pagers and email.
• Eliminating inefficient workflows caused by outdated pager technologies, improving provider satisfaction with a protected, easy to use secure messaging platform.
• Giving providers the flexibility to use the most convenient devices for their workflow.

HIPAA-compliant secure communications helps your organization coordinate care by:

• Supporting communication across any desktop, tablet, or mobile device.
• Enabling BYOD by balancing security with convenience in communicating PHI providers to communicate efficiently and securely across the entire continuum of care.
• Enabling efficient and secure group communications across the entire continuum of care.