HIPAA and FileMaker Pro

Zoltan Dala

Business Manager Apple Store

"I have known Richard and his team for many years. They are experts with FileMaker and a pleasure to work with."

Richard Carlton Consulting Inc has been very involved with HIPAA related issues through its work with Sutter Health and the U.C. San Francisco Medical Center. Consequently, our experience may be of value to healthcare related organizations who wish to deploy FileMaker.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 affects computer and database systems which interface with healthcare professionals. While HIPAA does not provide specific instructions for complying with HIPAA, it does provide guidelines that should be met.

Fortunately, this means that FileMaker, or any other technology, is NOT prohibited by HIPAA. It does mean however that FileMaker databases containing patient information, or other sensitive materials, need to be "in compliance" by April 21, 2005.

Getting into compliance with FileMaker Pro 6 was a tricky affair. Successful compliance may or may not have been possible depending upon your organizations interpretations of the HIPAA statutes (this is where the lawyers come in).

However, FileMaker Pro 9/10/11 was specifically engineered for easy compliance with HIPAA as well as other government regulations regarding database setup and usage.

Specifically, FileMaker's greatly improved security system allows FileMaker to comply with HIPAA, provided the database developer is skilled and is experienced with HIPAA issues. Point to point encryption and user specific security features were essentially non existent in FMP 6, and are of critical importance to HIPAA. FMP 9/10/11 supports these features plus a dizzying array of other improvements that lead to HIPAA compliance.

Even with FMP 9/10/11, implementing HIPAA compliant can be very challenging for the average user, since doing so requires restricted interface access and very specific security procedures.

Richard Carlton Consulting has been developing mission critical FileMaker solutions for companies since 1990.

For more information, regarding HIPAA and FileMaker, please feel free to contact us.