Is Zoom Phone a HIPAA compliant cloud solution?

Written by Hoala Greevy | April 25, 2020

We've been seeing more vendors, customers, and prospects asking about HIPAA compliant services. This is especially true now as we see an accelerated, long overdue adoption of digital transformation in healthcare. Since Paubox is a Business Associate to thousands of customers, we’ve been wondering if they are able to use Zoom Phone in a HIPAA compliant manner.

UPDATE: In April 2020, in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the Notification of Enforcement Discretion, which allows healthcare providers to use widely available communication apps, such as [name of the app], for telehealth services without the risk of incurring HIPAA fines. For more information, check out this recent Paubox blog post.

We know the HIPAA industry is vast, so we can empathize with just how many people need to use cloud services in this sector. Today we will determine if Zoom Phone offers HIPAA compliant service or not.

Zoom Phone

Zoom Phone is an enterprise cloud phone system that offers:

Intelligent Call Routing & Auto Attendants
Out-of-the-box Integrations
Voicemail & Call Recording
Secure HD Audio

What is a Business Associate?

A Business Associate is a person or company that performs certain functions or activities that involve the use or disclosure of protected health information (PHI) for a Covered Entity. In a nutshell, the role of a Business Associate is to help Covered Entities comply with the HIPAA Privacy Rule

Read full article: What does it mean to be a Business Associate?

Business Associate Agreement provisions

If a Business Associate provides services to a Covered Entity, then a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) must be in place. A BAA is a written contract between a Covered Entity and a Business Associate and is required by law for HIPAA compliance. At a minimum, a Business Associate Agreement contains 10 provisions.

Read full article: Business Associate Agreement Provisions

Zoom and the Business Associate Agreement

We checked Zoom's site for mention of their ability to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). We found the Zoom for Healthcare page, which spells out:

HIPAA compliant Zoom starts at $2,400 per year
Zoom will sign a BAA with a "HIPAA enabled plan"

In the Zoom Help Center, we also found an FAQ article called, HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA). There are a few configuration settings in Zoom that are applied to HIPAA enabled plans:

Require encryption for 3rd Party Endpoints (H323/SIP) is enabled all account members
Cloud recordings are disabled
Device and user information is removed logging and reporting
Encrypted Chat is be enabled by default

Furthermore, last week we reached out to Zoom support to inquire whether Zoom Phone lies within scope of the Zoom Business Associate Agreement. The answer is yes.

Does Zoom Phone offer HIPAA Compliant Service?

The Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is a key component to HIPAA compliance between a Covered Entity and a Business Associate. We were able to learn the following about Zoom Phone and its ability to be considered a HIPAA compliant solution:

Zoom is willing to sign a BAA with its customers
The BAA is included as part of Zoom's HIPAA enabled plan and does include different pricing and configuration settings
Zoom Phone is considered as within scope of the Zoom BAA

Conclusion: Zoom Phone can be configured as a HIPAA compliant cloud service.

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