In UAE, businesses cannot operate without a trade license. It has recently been announced by the UAE that they are requiring healthcare businesses to be HIPAA compliant before they can receive their trade licenses. As there is a lot of confusion surrounding this announcement, UAE trade license requirements and HIPAA compliance are discussed below.
UAE Trade License Requirements and HIPAA Compliance: What Does This Mean for UAE Healthcare Organizations?
HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was enacted to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of PHI. There are six major components of HIPAA compliance as follows:
Self-audits. Healthcare organizations are required to complete six self-audits annually. Self-audits measure the safeguards that you have in place securing PHI to determine whether or not they adhere to HIPAA standards.
Gap identification and remediation. By completing self-audits, gaps in your safeguards are identified. To be HIPAA compliant, you must address identified gaps with remediation plans. Remediation plans create a framework for how your organization plans to address identified deficiencies.
Policies and procedures. Policies and procedures create a framework for how your organization will comply with the HIPAA Security, Privacy, and Breach Notification Rules. Policies and procedures also dictate the proper uses and disclosures of PHI. They must be customized for your organization and reviewed annually.
Employee training. Employee training is one of the most important aspects of HIPAA compliance. Without proper training, employees are unaware of their obligations to HIPAA. Training should include HIPAA basics, your organization’s policies and procedures, cybersecurity best practices, and the proper use of social media in the workplace.
Business associate management. As a healthcare organization, you likely have business associates that create, receive, transmit, store, or maintain PHI on your behalf. To ensure that your business associates are adhering to HIPAA requirements, you must vet them by sending them a vendor questionnaire, and have them sign a business associate agreement.
Incident response. Breaches affecting PHI must be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR), affected patients, and for large-scale breaches, the media.
For UAE healthcare organizations to be HIPAA compliant, and comply with the new UAE trade license requirements, they will need to implement an effective HIPAA compliance program. To implement an effective HIPAA compliance program, the six major components of HIPAA compliance, mentioned above, must be addressed.
