Business associates face distinct compliance challenges and the same liability as covered entities for HIPAA violations.
BAs must execute compliant BAAs with covered entities, subcontractors, and ensure contracts include all required HIPAA provisions.
Since 2013, business associates face the same compliance obligations and penalties as covered entities for HIPAA violations.
BAs using subcontractors must ensure downstream vendors also sign BAAs and maintain appropriate safeguards for PHI.
Multi-tenant platforms and shared infrastructure must implement proper data segregation to protect each client's PHI.
Covered entities have the right to audit business associates, requiring documentation and evidence of compliance controls.
Different BA services (billing, IT support, cloud hosting) have unique technical and operational security requirements.
Business associates have the same security and privacy obligations as covered entities.
Different types of business associates have unique compliance considerations.
Follow this roadmap to achieve and maintain HIPAA compliance as a business associate.
Determine if you create, receive, maintain, or transmit PHI on behalf of covered entities. If yes, you're a business associate.
Perform comprehensive risk analysis of your operations, systems, and data flows to identify PHI handling and vulnerabilities.
Establish administrative, physical, and technical security measures appropriate to your services and risk profile.
Sign Business Associate Agreements with all covered entity clients and obtain BAAs from your subcontractors.
Provide annual HIPAA training to all employees who handle PHI or support systems containing PHI.
Ongoing monitoring, annual risk assessments, policy updates, and continuous improvement of security controls.
Comprehensive HIPAA compliance support specifically designed for business associates.
Comprehensive evaluation of your business associate operations, contracts, and security controls with gap analysis.
HIPAA-compliant Business Associate Agreement templates and negotiation guidance for client and subcontractor contracts.
Customized HIPAA policies tailored to your specific BA service type (billing, IT, cloud, consulting).
Program for identifying, contracting, and monitoring subcontractors who access PHI on your behalf.
Documentation, evidence collection, and audit response procedures to support covered entity audit requests.
Technical guidance for implementing encryption, access controls, logging, and other HIPAA security requirements.