HIPAA is rigorously enforced across the USA and failure to comply will incur severe consequences.Īny dentist who forgoes the HIPAA regulations and uses WeTransfer to share sensitive information on their patients is liable for prosecution. ![]() This means that dentists, dental practices, and their business associates cannot use WeTransfer. Since we are not bound by US laws, we aren’t obliged to comply with HIPAA regulations.” As the company itself explains: “We are not HIPAA compliant because it focuses on medical data and our service was primarily built to cater to creative minds. Also, we have a global audience to cater to and it has proven to be quite difficult to make exceptions on a country-level. With its headquarters in Amsterdam, WeTransfer has rapidly grown in popularity over the last decade and it now services millions of clients sharing billions of files all over the world on a daily basis. However, the system has not been set up to cater specifically to the healthcare sector in the US, or even to comply with American legislation. HIPAA is a legal requirement and non-compliance can result in substantial fines, lawsuits, reputational damage, and a loss of business. It’s this latter aspect that is of particular concern to healthcare companies such as dental practices when they outsource their file transfer and storage needs to a third party, like WeTransfer. Technical safeguards: the technological safeguards that are adopted to protect the integrity of file sharing, storage, and other communications made over open networks.Physical safeguards: the physical defenses that a company has put in place to stop unauthorized access to the data in question.Administrative safeguards: a company’s internal policies and procedures geared towards achieving overall compliance with HIPAA.With the changing landscape of technological advancements have come significant changes in the way that businesses store and share such information. To accommodate those changes, HIPAA has been revised and expanded several times in the intervening years since its inception, with provisions now made to cover the processing of ePHI as well.Īlthough the legislation is quite complex, it basically boils down to implementing the following three safeguards when handling PHI and ePHI: ![]() Additionally, PHI also encompasses the individual’s insurance data, bill payment information, and anything that might be defined as sensitive. In this context, PHI refers to all information that an organization holds regarding the medical history of a patient, including data relating to any conditions a person has suffered from and any treatment they have already received or may receive in the future. HIPAA was first signed into law in 1996 in a bid to set out data protection guidelines with which healthcare companies must comply when handling PHI. WeTransfer is one of the most popular file-sharing solutions in the world, used by millions of people every day. But is WeTransfer HIPAA compliant – and can dentists use it to send files containing electronic PHI (ePHI)? ![]() Any commercial entity working in the healthcare sector – including dentists, dental practices, and their business associates – is required by law to take adequate precautions to safeguard the protected health information (PHI) they store, transmit and process, as dictated by the Health Insurance and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
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