Safeguard your clients’ protected health information with medical spa software that guarantees both security and privacy

If you own or manage a medspa, then you already know how important HIPAA compliance is for your business. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) lays out rules and regulations for how you store and share your clients’ personal information. 

Most booking software can help you manage appointments and generate reports, but not every program meets HIPAA’s strict requirements. To protect your clients without getting bogged down in tedious details, you can invest in HIPAA-compliant medical spa software. With the right program, you can spend less time micromanaging client records and more time providing top-notch treatments.

What does HIPAA compliance mean for medspas?

As a quick refresher, HIPAA is a United States federal government standard that regulates protected health information (PHI) in electronic databases. When medical professionals provide treatment, they record sensitive patient data, like names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and even photos. Providers need to guarantee that this data is both private and secure, since it could cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands.

HIPAA compliance has two main components:

• The HIPAA Privacy Rule discusses how healthcare providers can — and can’t — share PHI. In general, PHI is fair game for medical professionals and their clerical staff, as well as insurers. Otherwise, sharing this information requires explicit patient consent. (There are some limited exceptions for law enforcement, public health, and imminent danger to a patient.)

• The HIPAA Security Rule lays out cybersecurity standards for healthcare organizations. Electronic PHI must be confidential, complete, and easily available upon request. Providers must “detect and safeguard against anticipated threats” with strong cybersecurity systems. Staff members also need training and certification for HIPAA compliance.

How to choose HIPAA-compliant medical spa software

While your medspa has to comply with HIPAA, there’s no single “right” way to do it. To qualify as HIPAA-compliant medical spa software, a program should keep client records confidential, limit file access to authorized parties, and protect databases against cyber threats. There are lots of different ways to accomplish these things, from simple password-protected spreadsheets to specialized medspa management platforms. The specialized platforms tend to be easier to use and more effective, especially since they can also help you manage bookings, track your inventory, and create detailed client profiles.

If you’re in the market for HIPAA-compliant medspa software, these features may be a useful place to start:

Access controls

The cornerstone of HIPAA is that only authorized parties can see PHI. As such, you may want to look for a medspa management platform that can limit access to sensitive information. Consider software that lets you create multiple user accounts, each with different access privileges. A medical director, for example, might be able to see and edit every patient profile. A billing specialist, on the other hand, would have to request access on a client-by-client basis — and that access might be temporary. You could also restrict certain information, such as Social Security numbers, to users with higher access levels.

PHI confidentiality

While you can use medspa management software to store patient data, HIPAA has strict rules about how you can share that PHI with third parties, including the software provider. While it may seem counterintuitive, you might want a medspa management platform that limits its ability to access the PHI you enter. If a platform doesn’t have the right measures in place to provide data privacy during audits, maintenance, or tech support sessions, then it may not be able to offer HIPAA compliance.

Data encryption

No one wants to deal with a data breach, but it’s happened to some of the biggest and best-protected businesses on Earth. Accounting for “anticipated threats” is also part of the HIPAA Security Rules. Encrypting sensitive data is one way to be proactive about cybersecurity. Some medical spa management platforms can encrypt files, both at rest (when they’re on your network) and in transit (when you move or send them from place to place). Encryption makes files unreadable without a decryption key, which only authorized users have. That way, even if a cybercriminal pulls off a successful data breach, they would have a difficult time learning anything about your clients or their PHI.

Remote account management

If you notice a staff member using your software suspiciously, you may want the ability to log them out of the system as quickly as possible. Similarly, if you need to deactivate a staff account, you should be able to do it from your own computer. Look for software with remote account management features, which can give you visibility into who’s accessing your files.

Risks of HIPAA noncompliance

Maintaining HIPAA compliance requires some effort, but it’s a lot better than the alternative. Medspas that don’t comply with HIPAA regulations could face steep fines or costly lawsuits. Individual staff members could lose their jobs or even their medical credentials. Clients who have their private data exposed might be even worse off, though. They could become easy targets for identity theft or have their private medical information exposed online. You don’t want any of these things associated with your medspa, so it’s in your best interests to work with a platform that understands how important HIPAA compliance is for medical aesthetics businesses.

HIPAA-compliant medical spa software can give you the foundation you need to protect both your clients and your business. Boulevard’s medical spa software, for example, offers all the features discussed here, along with tools to streamline your booking, communications, and marketing. With software that ensures HIPAA compliance, you can focus on your clients instead of your tech stack.