Continuum, a provider of managed services solutions, has gone all-in on compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as it is now fully prepared to assist its partners and their clients in meeting the act’s standards, as well as those of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Beyond that, the company has also introduced the Continuum HIPAA Resource Center, which aims to provide managed service providers (MSPs) with up-to-date compliance information.
With the HIPAA privacy and security deadline being today, this announcement is timely, to say the least, and of course not at all surprising since healthcare is an important vertical for Continuum, according to Rob Autor, the company’s senior vice president of Global Service Delivery.
"Healthcare is one of the largest vertical markets for our partner base. MSPs who serve covered entities such as doctors' offices, hospitals, and health insurers need to be compliant with HIPAA if they want to continue those customer relationships and protect themselves from liability," said Autor in a statement. "We have strengthened our overall information security program throughout 2013 in anticipation of this month's deadline and implemented safeguards necessary to achieve HIPAA compliance."
Earlier this month, Continuum entered into a new partnership with SolutionOne, a services provider for document and content management software and office technology, under which Continuum is now the exclusive software and services partner for SolutionOne’s managed IT services business.
As for the company’s HIPAA announcement, Continuum is willing to sign a business associate agreement (BAA) with partners who need it. Such a contract acknowledges an associate’s obligations under HIPAA and describes how that associate will report and respond to a data breach.
The Continuum HIPAA Resource Center, meanwhile, features blogs, an HIPAA FAQ, as well as links to external sites, to provide pretty much all the information an MSP will need to stay current on HIPAA.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
