Every business should have a website, and this is doubly true for healthcare organizations. Hospitals, clinics, health plans and insurers are providers of critical services for their clients, and those clients need easy, 24/7 access to basic information that they will naturally seek out online. But covered entities have many responsibilities when it comes to choosing vendors to provide business services, including website hosting. And as our comprehensive review of the most popular webhosting companies demonstrated, popularity does not necessarily mean capability when it comes to providing HIPAA compliant websites. HIPAA Vault, however, puts HIPAA compliant hosting front and center.
What is HIPAA Vault?
Based in San Marcos, California, HIPAA Vault was founded in 1997 as Etica Inc. by Gil Vidals. "Whether for enterprise-level clients like Deloitte or Northrop Grumman, or the myriad of smaller healthcare offices and clinics we serve, our talented team of IT professionals consistently delivers the highly secure infrastructures and services required for all our commercial and government accounts," its website proclaims. Key to HIPAA Vault services are its data centers, located in San Diego and Phoenix, Arizona, which the company explains have several security certifications and extensive access control measures in place.
Is HIPAA Vault HIPAA compliant?
Given the company's name, and its namesake service, it's obvious that HIPAA Vault claims to provide a wide range of HIPAA compliant cloud-based services, including web hosting. In order to provide these services to covered entities, vendors need to sign a business associate agreement (BAA). And Vidals himself proclaims on his LinkedIn profile that "HIPAA Vault signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for every client." The company blog also provides helpful information on the topic, including " What is a BAA?" and " BAA for HIPAA Hosting." Finally, HIPAA Vault touts that its services have been audited by Compliancy Group, which confirmed its HIPAA compliance through an "Achieve, Illustrate, and Maintain" HIPAA compliance program.
