A Brief Guide On HIPAA Consultants + Top 10 HIPAA Consulting Firms

Shivam Jha

Shivam Jha

Dec 08, 2023

HIPAA Consultants

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a challenging federal law in the United States. It takes compliance professionals with a thorough understanding of the law to assess a company’s risks, appropriately train employees, and assist in the development of HIPAA policies and procedures.

Who are HIPAA consultants?

HIPAA consultants are firms that help Covered Entities (CEs) and Business Associates (BAs) create and implement measures to protect patient data and align with HIPAA’s security standards.  The majority of HIPAA consulting services are composed of compliance specialists who have a thorough understanding of the requirements of HIPAA and other related laws. 

HIPAA compliance consultants prioritize compliance issues that they identify as potential risks under the HIPAA rules. In general, HIPAA consultants have a minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree, and many have additional coursework concentration in the HIPAA law itself.

Typically, each company has a group of consultants with expertise in different facets of the Act, including risk assessments, training, and incident management. Although it cannot guarantee that a breach of PHI won’t happen, the firm’s participation in an organization’s compliance efforts may act as a mitigating factor in later OCR investigations.

What are the roles and responsibilities of a HIPAA consultant?

The roles and responsibilities of a HIPAA consultant entail a lot of nuanced and important tasks like conducting a security analysis, keeping track of digital assets, and more.

Here are the top roles and responsibilities of a HIPAA compliance consulting firm:

Keeping track of all your digital assets

The first step in safeguarding your digital assets is to locate and list all of them. HIPAA consultants start by assisting you in maintaining an accurate inventory of all your computing resources, including both active systems and older systems with potential working components. 

Conduct a security analysis

HIPAA specialists assist you in determining the level of risk for each component matched against known and prospective vulnerabilities after you have inventoried your digital assets. This type of analysis should identify and evaluate the risk posed by your suppliers, contractors, partners, vendors, and other service providers who have access to your internal data or systems.

Prioritize threats 

The most important assets for business operations must be determined, given higher priority, and given greater resources. HIPAA consultants help you determine which assets are most important to your company’s resilience and conduct a benefit/risk analysis to determine how much of your security budget you should allocate to it.

Automate threat mitigation, redress, and detection

Protected Health Information is a very sensitive piece of information that requires the highest level of security. HIPAA consultants assist businesses by automating threat detection and developing plans to reduce any risks that can endanger the enterprise.

Keep track of serious security flaws

The tools and techniques used by cybercriminals to attack are always changing. Your security team members must constantly monitor and assess if your IT systems are exposed to brand-new types of attacks if you want to safeguard against quickly evolving risks. HIPAA consultants support your business by keeping an eye on security concerns so that you can focus your resources on other tasks.

Create and test an incident management strategy

Having an incident management strategy in place to recognize, evaluate, and address such significant situations is necessary for proactive security posture management in the event that the organization is the target of an attack or experiences a data breach. HIPAA consultants assist in creating a strategy that specifies the proper actions and describes their processes and duties. 

Minimize effort, maximize HIPAA success

List of HIPAA compliance consulting firms

A trustworthy HIPAA consulting firm will create a customized assistance strategy to meet the unique requirements of an organization. Finding a suitable HIPAA consultant can be confusing, given the abundance of possibilities. 

Here we have the top 10 HIPAA consulting companies:

  • Appinventiv
  • Clearwater Compliance
  • InCompliance
  • Healthicity, LLC.
  • RSM US
  • CynergisTek, Inc.
  • ScienceSoft
  • Arka Softwares
  • Praetorian Secure
  • Acevedo Consulting, Inc.

You should always first check your needs and requirements before selecting a HIPAA consulting firm, as a lot of them have their unique set of features. This will allow you to have a personalized set of solutions tailored to your framework. 

How much does HIPAA consulting cost?

The size of the CE or BA, its “compliance complexity,” and the required level of assistance all affect how much a HIPAA consulting will cost. Depending on whether a consultant must evaluate a couple of documents to make sure they are compliant or whether the CE or BA needs comprehensive HIPAA counsel, HIPAA consulting rates can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.

HIPAA consultation can be a wise investment, regardless of price. It only takes one avoidable gap in HIPAA compliance rules or methods for a PHI breach to occur and for the OCR to levy significant penalties. A CE or BA may get a fine for HIPAA non-compliance even without a breach taking place as a result of an audit or other investigation.

Although HIPAA consultation can be an expensive and time-consuming process, you don’t need to worry, as Sprinto is a compliance automation solution that provides you with HIPAA compliance automation as per your specific needs. 

Sprinto’s tailor-made solutions are not just cost-effective but also saves your time and resources as compared to getting compliant manually. 

The best part about Sprinto, though, is that it’s not just a tool to get you compliant but an overall solution to get you compliant and keep you compliant. Sprinto’s compliance experts are always ready to assist you whenever you need them. Talk to our experts and see the difference for yourself. 

Save big on HIPAA costs

What are the pros and cons of a HIPAA consultant?

Hiring a HIPAA consulting service for your organization seems to be a worthy investment, but it might not be for everyone. Here are some of the factors that you should consider before making this investment:

Pros of HIPAA consultant:

Expertise 

HIPAA consultants are specialists in their industry and can give businesses the most recent information on HIPAA rules and recommended procedures.

Personalized Solutions 

Consultants can modify their services to meet the particular requirements of an organization, offering special solutions that are appropriate for its particular circumstance.

Compliance

An organization can ensure HIPAA compliance by engaging with a HIPAA consultant, which can lower the risk of data breaches and fines for non-compliance.

Risk management 

In order to lower the danger of data breaches, HIPAA consultants can find potential risks and weaknesses in a company’s systems and make suggestions for enhancing security measures.

Time and money saved

An organization can save time and money by outsourcing HIPAA compliance to a consultant by avoiding the requirement to hire and train staff on HIPAA standards.

Cons of HIPAA consultant:

Cost

It can be expensive to hire a HIPAA expert, especially for smaller organizations with limited funding.

Dependency 

When an organization uses HIPAA consultants frequently, it may develop a dependency on them, which could be problematic if the consultant becomes unavailable or the organization eventually finds itself unable to pay for its services.

Less control 

By outsourcing to a consultant, an organization could feel as though they are losing control of their HIPAA compliance activities.

Having an inadequate understanding of the organization

The success of a HIPAA consultant’s recommendations may be constrained by their lack of a thorough understanding of the organization’s operations, culture, and particular problems.

The Sprinto Way

You recognize the significance of safeguarding patient information and abiding by HIPAA laws as a healthcare organization. However, if you rely entirely on a HIPAA consultant, navigating the intricate HIPAA compliance landscape can be overwhelming and time-consuming.

While there are plenty of HIPAA consultant firms that will help you with HIPAA compliance, a better approach to this situation is automating all of the work that goes into making a company HIPAA compliant. 

Sprinto is a HIPAA compliance automation platform that does everything a HIPAA consultant does for you and more. Do you ask about the benefit? Well, Sprinto cuts down the time it takes to get compliant from months to days. Not just that, automating your HIPAA compliance will help you put your resources into the projects that bring actual revenue to the company.

If you’re hesitant about HIPAA compliance automation, you will be relieved to know that Sprinto has compliance experts guiding you every step of the way. Get in touch with our compliance experts here. 

FAQs

What is a HIPAA liaison?

The liaisons are the first point of contact regarding HIPAA Compliance questions and procedures for covered entities. Patients may also submit requests to the HIPAA Liaisons for access to, amendments to, appeals of, and accountings of disclosures of their PHI.

What is the HIPAA officer responsible for?

A HIPAA Compliance Officer is in charge of carrying out your company’s privacy rules and guaranteeing the protection of protected health information (PHI). According to HIPAA requirements, they are in charge of creating the organization’s policies and procedures.

How can a HIPAA consultant assist with compliance?

HIPAA consultants can assist organizations in understanding and complying with the numerous HIPAA standards. They aid in spotting potential dangers, creating sensible defenses, putting security measures in place, educating employees, and establishing procedures to uphold compliance. They keep track of regulatory changes and offer continuing assistance to address any compliance issues.

Shivam Jha

Shivam Jha

Shivam is our in house cybersecurity sage with over six years of experience in cybersecurity under his belt. He is passionate about making the digital world safer for everyone and whipping up Indian delicacies on the weekend.

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