The Schellman Blog

The HIPAA Security Rule was first introduced in 2003 as part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. A major update to the HIPAA Security Rule then occurred in 2013, as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Despite the fact that that was 12 years ago, and that technology has changed significantly since then, this still stands as the most recent update.

Being HIPAA-compliant means that a healthcare provider has adequate measures in place to protect patient data. In recent years, there has been an alarming growth in the number of data breaches targeting the healthcare industry, and more breaches have meant more (and more serious) consequences for the affected provider.

As the overarching regulation for healthcare data in the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has helped secure what is considered personally identifiable information (PII) and its transfer/disclosure within the sector. Under HIPAA, providers and their business associates (BAs) must meet the law’s requirements, including the administrative safeguards within its Security Rule.

Perhaps believing they’re simply too small for the government to consider, some smaller healthcare providers will choose to either fly under the radar or hope that regulators of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) won’t notice their lack of correct processes and controls. However, this likely won’t work—in fact, over 55% of HIPAA fines in 2022 were levied against small practices.

Successfully managing your HIPAA risk means accounting for those introduced by your vendors that are supplementing existing business processes in different ways. Vendors can make you vulnerable in a variety of ways, which means a variety of solutions becomes necessary.

PHI stands for Protected Health Information, while Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) refers to any individually identifiable health information that is created, stored, transmitted, or received electronically. That being said, many organizations run into trouble with how to define exactly what PHI and ePHI are, and that's because it's not always so simple to discern.