KPMG: Most Business Associates Not Ready For Security Standards

A new study by consulting firm KPMG has concluded that two-thirds of business associates aren’t completely ready to step up to industry demands for protecting patient health information. Specifically, the majority of business associates don’t seem to be ready to meet HITRUST standards for securing protected health information. Plus, it’s worth noting that HITRUST certification doesn’t mean your organization is HIPAA compliant or protected from a breach. It’s just the first steps and many aren’t doing it.

HITRUST has established a Common Security Framework which is used by healthcare organizations (as well as others that create, access, store or exchange sensitive and/or regulated data). The CSF includes a set of controls designed to harmonize the requirements of multiple regulations and standards.

According to KPMG’s Emily Frolick, third-party risk and assurance leader for KPMG’s healthcare practice, a growing number of healthcare organizations are asking their business associates to obtain a HITRUST CSF Certification or pass an SOC 2 + HITRUST CSF examination to demonstrate that they are making a good-faith effort to protect patient information. The CSF assessment is an internal control-based approach allowing organizations such as business associates to assess and demonstrate the measures they are taken to protect healthcare data.

To see if vendors targeting the healthcare industry seemed capable of meeting these standards, KPMG surveyed 600 professionals in this category to determine their organization’s security status. The survey found that half of those responding weren’t ready for HITRUST examination or certification, while 17.4% were planning for the CSF assessment.

When asked how they were progressing toward meeting HITRUST CSF requirements, just 7% said they were completely ready. Meanwhile, 8% said their organization was well along in its implementation process, and 17.4% said they were in the early stages of CSF implementation.

One the biggest barriers to CSF readiness seems to be having adequate staff in place, ranking ahead of cultural, technological and financial concerns, KPMG found. When asked whether they had the staff in place to meet the standard, 53% said they did, but 47% said they did not have “the right staff the right level skills to execute against the HITRUST CSF.” That being said, 27% said all four factors were at issue. (Interestingly, 23% said” none of the above” posed barriers to CSF readiness.)

Readers won’t be surprised to learn that KPMG has reason to encourage vendors to seek the HITRUST cert and examination – specifically, that it works as a HITRUST Qualified CSF Assessor for healthcare organizations. Also, KPMG works with very large organizations which need to establish high levels of structure in how they evaluate their health data security measures. Hopefully this means they go well beyond what HITRUST requires.

Nonetheless, even if you work with a relatively small healthcare organization that doesn’t have the resources to engage in obtaining formal healthcare security certifications, this discussion serves as a good reminder. Particularly given that many breaches take place due to slips by business associates, it doesn’t hurt to take a close look at their security practices now and then. Even asking them some commonsense questions about how they and their contractors handle data is a good idea. After all, even if business associates cause a breach to your data, you still have to explain the breach to your patients.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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