Preferred Blog

Many small businesses don’t think about HIPAA until it’s too late. Yet if your organization handles or even touches protected health information (PHI), from patient records to insurance data, you’re subject to HIPAA’s security and privacy rules.

That includes medical practices, wellness startups, law firms, and even marketing agencies serving healthcare clients. For many, compliance feels complex or out of reach, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right structure, HIPAA readiness becomes part of your everyday operations, not an occasional scramble.

This guide outlines what every small business should know, along with a practical checklist to help you build and maintain HIPAA compliance with confidence.

As technology continues to gain prominence in healthcare, it plays an increasingly vital role. Advancements in technology have allowed the healthcare industry to stabilize costs, improve access, and personalize care delivery—objectives that were challenging in the past. These benefits come with a potential downside: data privacy issues, which are becoming more concerning as technology advances.

2020 was, obviously, a challenging year for healthcare providers. In addition to the obvious issue of the COVID-19 pandemic creating serious operational, financial, and supply chain difficulties, cybersecurity concerns didn’t go away during this time. Let’s consider some of the additional stresses that IT security needs can, will, and have placed on healthcare providers.

If your work requires you to store medical data, you should be aware of how important your data security is, as a problem could potentially put your business at risk of closing up shop permanently. Security has to be a priority with so many regulations setting compliance standards that must be followed. How can you balance the effectiveness of your business without undermining its security?

Today, perhaps now more than ever before, technology is making strides toward making its users consider ways to stay healthier. Wearables are one of the primary examples of how technology is aiming to make users both more active and more interested about their own health. At 2018’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, this technology was front and center, showcasing how far it has come in just a year’s time.