OAK TREE STORAGE, LLC

COMPLIANCE INFORMATION

HEALTH INSURANCE PORTABILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 1996

The HIPAA law of 1996 basically charged the Secretary of the US Department of Health & Human Services to develop rules and regulations for the protection of individual rights in the health care industry.

The subsequent Administrative Simplification amendment from the US Department of Health & Human Services created four major rules for the health care industry:

1. Standardization of electronic patient health, administrative and financial data transactions
2. Unique health identifiers for individuals, employers, health plans and health care providers
3. Security standards protecting the confidentiality and integrity of "individually identifiable health information," past, present or future.
4. Privacy rules governing the use and management of individual personal and medical information.

While Oak Tree Storage is concerned about all the HIPAA requirements internally as well as for our clients, our electronic services are designed to help you meet these requirements in two ways: first, by providing for the electronic data backup, restore and (in certain cases) disaster recovery functions that are part of your HIPAA compliance processes; and second, by ensuring that our services, data, equipment and facilities themselves conform to the HIPAA requirements in terms of privacy and security in the following sections of the laws:

5. Access
6. Administrative Safeguards
7. Authentication
8. Availability
9. Confidentiality
10. Encryption
11. Facility
12. Information system
13. Integrity
14. Malicious software
15. Password
16. Physical safeguards
17. Security or Security measures
18. Security incident
19. Technical safeguards
20. User
21. Workstation

For more specific information on these safeguards please refer to the Security/Privacy section of our website.

Oak tree cannot and does not make any claim of privacy, security or any other HIPAA compliant or other requirements for any data, files, databases, images on any media whatsoever, nor any other electronic or manual information created, maintained or filed in its clients’ offices, but can assure its clients of the privacy and security of any information properly backed up to our backup servers.

For disaster recovery server users, your encrypted data is installed on a server and only you and/or others that are authorized personnel of your designation will have access to this server, its applications, facilities and data. Such access has various security measures and are clearly explained in our User Manuals for your information.

For any further clarification of the HIPAA requirements, see the following references:

The Law: (PUBLIC LAW 104-191; AUG. 21, 1996; HEALTH INSURANCE PORTABILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 1996):  http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp/pl104191.htm

HIPAA Information (HHS): http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/

US Department of Health and Human Services; US Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation; Administrative Simplification in the Health Care Industry: http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp/

US Govt Dept of Labor – HIPAA: http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/health-plans/portability.htm

To discuss Oak Tree’s HIPAA compliance further, please contact Oak Tree Storage, LLC at custserv@oaktreestorage.com