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Click here to find out moreHealth care organizations are rapidly moving their data and applications to the cloud. With the HITECH Act's incentives for electronic health records, hospitals, physician practices, and other providers are on the face track to implement new IT systems. Cloud computing offers the opportunity to achieve this objective quickly and with lower IT costs. However, transitioning to a cloud computing environment is not without significant risk. Hospitals, physician practices and other health care entities are subject to a myriad of privacy and security requirements under HIPAA and state laws, and these laws differ by jurisdiction. Counsel to hospitals and physicians must carefully negotiate business associate agreements with cloud computing vendors that include clear indemnity, security, and data use and data return provisions. Assuring the “cloud” is located in a U.S. jurisdiction and allocating responsibility for a data breach between the provider and cloud computing vendor are key issues in contracting with a cloud provider. In this presentation, Matt Karlyn and Leeann Habte of Foley & Lardner LLP discuss some of the more significant privacy and security issues that arise during negotiations with cloud providers and how to effectively negotiate such terms, including: data privacy and security issues, service levels and availability, risk allocation and mitigation, insurance, backup and disaster recovery, and data retention.
