A huge challenge created by the HITECH Act is how to get hundreds of thousands of small covered entities (CE),business associates (BA) and Sub Contractors (Subs) compliant with a program that meets the “reasonable and appropriate” standard set by HIPAA.  The other challenge is, how does a covered entity (CE) or BA get “satisfactory assurance” that those small BAs and Subs are compliant?

The HIPAA HITECH Compliance Cooperative (CO-OP) elegantly meets both challenges.  The criteria for belonging to a CO-OP are; members must share a common business model  and have 5 employees or fewer.

This program is set up on a CO-OP website where members may join and share the use of the program.  They are supported by a personal Helper who is a privacy and security expert and provides advice and oversight.  The members must review and abide by the policies and procedures in the program but don’t have to go through a time-consuming editing process.  They receive read-only access so they may look at and print anything but they can’t change anything.  By devoting two hours a week for a couple of months they can get compliant, stay compliant by spending two hours per month, and prove compliance with the Compliance Meter^tm .

The members are enrolled in the maintenance program from Compliance Helper and they receive a monthly task list that they must accomplish to stay in compliance.  In addition they receive updates and revisions to their policies, procedures, and forms as the standards change and evolve.  Each member attests to their own organizations's compliance with a monthly electronic survey.   Their compliance performance is displayed through the Compliance Meter^tm which is displayed on their own website or can be deployed to their business partners. This active program helps to avoid “willful neglect”.

The setup fee for a new member is $125 and maintenance is $35 per month.