Is Box.net Hipaa Compliant? | Manage My Practice

How One Hospital Uses Box to Mobilize Their Providers

Posted by Abraham Whaley on April 2, 2013

At Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, doctors are saving time and sharing ideas using Box, a file-sharing and collaboration software that lets providers browse available medical documents and communicate with each other about treatment options. We are big believers in Box at Manage My Practice – we use it, and most of our clients end up using it too. Box is the only HIPAA-compliant file storage and collaboration service, and just like the doctors at Wake Forest, it makes our lives easier countless times a day. Wake Forest uses Box to store all of their medical journals and articles, as well as commenting on each file so that physicians can discuss procedures and treatment options. The doctors can access the repository from their tablets and smartphones, so that accessing detailed disease or treatment information is always as close as their mobile device.

Box is a simple and secure solution for sharing content with your coworkers, customers and audience. If you have moved your organizations’s practice management, electronic health record or email service to “the cloud” then it only makes sense to move your paperwork and content out of boxes and storage and into the cloud as well. If you have are using email attachments, a network drive, FTP server, or a non-compliant solution like Dropbox, then switching to Box can help your practice reduce your liability, stay HIPAA compliant, and store all of your digital content in a secure and accessible manner.

Box also makes mobilizing your workforce across locations easy. Box means your content is always available in a web browser, a phone or tablet, or synced on your desktop. Many of our consulting clients also use it to coordinate work and file across locations. If you have outsourced your billing or human resources, a shared folder in Box allows both locations to have the latest information and stay in touch.

Manage My Practice is a Certified Box Reseller, and would love to help you leverage Box to improve your practice’s workflow.

Tags: Box, file sharing, HIPAA, hipaa compliance, hipaa compliant file sharing, is box.net hipaa compliant?

Posted in: Compliance, Day-to-Day Operations, Headlines, Innovation

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Is Dropbox Putting Your Medical Practice’s Compliance Plan at Risk?

Posted by Abraham Whaley on September 24, 2012

Since its release in 2008, Internet File Storage tool Dropbox has been a big hit with people who have to keep track of files on multiple computers. Users can download a free program that lets them upload files to “the cloud” (see: a server or servers connected to the Internet), and then can access the files on any other device: other PCs or Macs, any web browser, even a smartphone or tablet. The program puts a small, “dropbox” in the bottom corner of the user’s screen and any file dragged into the icon is automatically uploaded. When the user looks at the dropbox on another device, the file is there waiting.

Dropbox has been wildly popular because it is extremely useful: it saves people time and makes them more productive, and is free for the first 2GB of storage. Users can either earn more free storage by referring friends to the program, or purchase more storage with plans that start at $9.99 per month. There are also group plans that allow for centralized file sharing.

In fact, some of your employees could be using Dropbox in your practice right now to let them work from home or the road, or sync multiple work computers, or even give them access to work data on their mobile devices. As all healthcare management professionals know, this has the potential to be a huge problem. The data that is handled in many daily tasks in a medical practice is protected not only by patient confidentiality, but also by federal regulations with some serious financial teeth. On Dropbox’s website, they go after the question head on:

“Unfortunately, Dropbox does not currently have HIPAA, FERPA, SAS 70, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, or PCI certifications. We’ll update this page with any new certifications as we receive them, so please do check back”