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by Erik Kangas, PhD, CEO
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Posts Tagged ‘business associate agreement’

Google Apps HIPAA Compliance Gotchas: Email encryption not included and higher price

Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

There has been a lot of hype about Google offering a Business Associate Agreement to paid Google Apps customers who must abide by HIPAA regulations.  Those who are familiar with Google may be under the incorrect assumption that simply signing up for Google Apps will solve all their HIPAA compliance challenges.  This seems to be increasingly less likely as of October, 2014.

Myths and hidden costs pervade this equation. If a HIPAA-aspiring entity isn’t fully educated about the finer details of the compliance process, they could end up paying very large amounts of money for Google services and still be non-compliant. Here we discuss some misconceptions about Google services as they apply to HIPAA to help you avoid the pitfalls of non-compliance.

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Tags: baa, business associate agreement, email encryption, gmail, Google apps, hipaa, hipaa compliance, ombibus
Posted in LuxSci Library: HIPAA, New Feature Announcements
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Do HIPAA Resellers Need Business Associate Agreements with their Clients?

Thursday, March 27th, 2014

HIPAAThe short answer is “Yes“.

The HIPAA Omnibus (and HITECH) rules states that a chain of Business Associate Agreements is required from the Covered Entity though each business partner in the chain of companies that have potential access to the ePHI of that covered entity.

In the case of LuxSci HIPAA resellers, the chain of companies is:

  1. LuxSci
  2. LuxSci Reseller
  3. Resellers’ Customers (be they Covered Entities or Business Associates)

So, LuxSci would have a business associate agreement with the Reseller and the Reseller would have separate business associate agreements with each of his/her customers.  This is because the LuxSci HIPAA reseller is acting as a VAR (value added reseller) of LuxSci, administering his customers accounts.  As such, the HIPAA Reseller provides basic support to his customers, can do password resets, can technically access their ePHI via password reset and support processes, etc.

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Tags: business associate agreement, hipaa, reseller
Posted in LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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HIPAA Resellers Make LuxSci Services Their Own

Monday, March 17th, 2014

HIPAASmall web or IT shops specializing in services for the medical segment often subscribe to LuxSci to provide HIPAA-complaint email and/or web services to their customers.  We take care of providing the services, support, and compliance.  They take care of getting the customers setup, providing direct support, integrating with customers’ other services, etc.  These businesses effectively resell LuxSci security services, charging their customers for our services plus the value add that they provide.

Aggressive resellers like to present LuxSci’s email and web security services as their own product offering, to a large extent.  This is easily accomplished with LuxSci’s Private Labeling service.

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Tags: business associate agreement, hipaa, medical, omnibus, private labeled, private labeling, resell, reseller
Posted in Affiliates & Resellers, Business Solutions, LuxSci Library: HIPAA
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Is Blackberry HIPAA Compliant? What You Need To Know

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

We are often approached by customers wanting to use their blackberry mobile devices to send and receive email that may contain electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI).  Such customers, when they must abide by the HIPAA and HITECH laws governing medical privacy, must comply with a long set of regulations that covers, among other things, how ePHI may be transmitted over the Internet.

This article deals with the security of sending and receiving email on a Blackberry configured for Internet email services (i.e. it does not apply to those connecting to an Blackberry Enterprise Server and Exchange).

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Tags: baa, blackberry, business associate agreement, ePHI, hipaa, hitech, privacy, security, ssl
Posted in LuxSci Library: HIPAA, LuxSci Library: The Technical Side of Email, Mobile
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HIPAA HITECH Business Associate Agreement and LuxSci Account Requirements

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Changes to HIPAA as a result of HITECH provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are going into effect on February 17, 2010.  These changes seriously impact the requirements on Business Associates and impose significant liability penalties on HIPAA violations.  For a discussion of these and how they relate to email and web services, see: HITECH 2010: HITECH Impact on Email and Web Outsourcing.

In response to these changes and to ensure that both LuxSci and its HIPAA customers are HIPAA-compliant:

  • Old BAA Void: All Business Associate Agreements (BAA), formerly known as Medical Privacy Agreements, that current LuxSci customers have by virtue of the old BAA being incorporated automatically in LuxSci’s Master Services Agreement are VOID as of February 17th, 2010.
  • New BAA Required: Any LuxSci Customer who is using or plans to use LuxSci for ePHI (electronic protected health information) of any kind (i.e. email, web sites, WebAides, databases, etc) must explicitly sign our new BAA and ARA (Account Restrictions Agreement) before LuxSci will consider itself a Business Associate and the customer’s LuxSci account HIPAA compliant.

LuxSci will be contacting customers that it believes might need to sign a BAA and ARA during the month of February.  However, as LuxSci does not know which customers are using their account(s) for storage or transmission of ePHI, it is up to our customers to contact LuxSci to establish a BAA.

See:

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Tags: baa, business associate agreement, ePHI, hipaa, hitech, privacy
Posted in LuxSci Insider
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