HIPAA Compliance FAQ

Question: If it is a doctor outside of our hospital who will be accessing our EHR do we still need to sign a business agreement?

Answer: Doctors are not Business Associates.  Barring very unusual circumstances, doctors are always Trading Partners with hospitals.  If a doc is accessing the hospital’s EMR, he is (or certainly should be) accessing the PHI contained in it for those patients under his care that he has admitted to that hospital.  As such, the hospital and the doc will be billing for their respective services to the same patient.  This relationship, as a rule, makes them Trading Partners.  There is an agreement type for this relationship, but it is NOT a BAA.  Every doc with privileges to a given hospital has signed this other type of agreement.

 

 

 

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