If you’ve worked with clients in the health/medical field for very long we know this heading rings true, we feel your pain.

We built the HIPAA FORMS Service and WordPress plugin because like you we needed a good option for our own clients and partners in the health/medical industry and there just wasn’t anything available.  We don’t just mean no “good” options, there were NO options!

Necessity is the mother of invention and we’re not big on telling clients and partners “we can’t” so we went to work on a real solution that we could use within our own projects.

As we began the R&D process and bounced the concept off of some of our partner agencies it became pretty obvious that there was a HUGE need for this so we made the decision early on to ensure that what we built would be something we could release publicly to other web designers.

We knew that there were a few things we had to do with the HIPAA FORMS Service, and do right.

1. It must be over the top secure and above and beyond what the HIPAA guidelines are to ensure compliance and the security of the data during all phases of that data’s life-cycle.
2. It must integrate with a free and popular WordPress form builder plugin that a large number of web designers are already using.
3. It must be simple to install and setup.
4. It must be simple for the web designers to implement.
5. It must be extremely simple for the end users (office staff at clinics, insurance agencies, etc) to use all day, every day.
6. It must be insanely simple for the person submitting the forms as well as make them aware that the form is secure.
7. Support must be integrated, simple and fast.
8. We must go above and beyond to not only ensure that we mitigate the liability for us, but also for the web designer and their end clients.

We know that the owners or board members of dental clinics, health clinics, hospitals and insurance agencies aren’t the ones that will be implementing this service.  It’s YOU, the web designers and developers that have the task of finding a solution and making it work.

Our initial primary goal was to build a solution for our own website builds so we’ve done everything we can to make the installation, setup and implementation of this service as seamless and efficient as possible.  If you can build a contact form with Caldera Forms or Gravity Forms you can build HIPAA Compliant web forms with our service, in fact once you have the plugin setup and build the form all you really need to do is check a box and your form is instantly compliant.

We also want to ensure that YOU have the knowledge and ability to protect both yourself and your client.  Our plugin requires either the end-client or you the web designer to sign a BAA with Code Monkeys however if YOU sign the BAA you should in-turn have a BAA in place with the end-client. There should be an “UNBROKEN CHAIN” of BAA agreements in place all the way up the chain.  A BAA agreement protects your client, not you or us but it is actually REQUIRED according to HIPAA Regulations and without the BAA in place your client is not in compliance and may be violating both federal and state privacy laws.  As your client’s technical expert on all thing relating to their website you have a moral obligation to make your client aware that a BAA agreement should be in place between you and them.

If you’re not an agency or freelancer but work on the website directly for a company you should still ensure that your company has a BAA agreement in place for all employees and any 3rd party IT professionals that may have access to protected health information.  Fines for violating HIPAA regulations can be in the six or even seven figures and your company could be out of business leaving you unemployed if your company is not compliant.

Regardless of if you’re an agency, freelancer or work directly for a company that takes protected private health information, if you have any questions or need help with anything relating to compliance or how to put a BAA agreement in place between yourself and your client please don’t hesitate to submit a support ticket or give us a call.