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Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

Can I work from home (and from other country) in compliance with HIPAA?

Can an MSP from USA hire me as a Network Engineer from Europe to help with the network design and implementation for a HIPAA compliant healthcare organization?

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Preston's avatar
Preston H Community Member

re: "Can I work from home (and from another country) in compliance with HIPAA?"

 

Yes. You can.

 

HIPAA has no restrictions against working from home or from another country.

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12 REPLIES 12
Jennifer's avatar
Jennifer M Community Member

lol oh dear. This is why you gotta be careful who you give your data to, kids. This is sad. There are lots of rules around this. I experienced this recently with a client who pen tested a healthcare application and he didn't really train me but there were docs distributed over the rules.

 

If you ever accidentally see patient data, you're supposed to report it.

Any PII must be blacked out or removed if it's in a report, documents, et.

IF you access that data, there should be an audit trail.

Under no circumstance should you be saving patient data on your computer.

 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

Unfortunately, I'm not a kid. I would like to be 20 years younger, but I am not.

Also, I'm working on firewalls, switches and routers, and have no access to patient data.

In addition, I couldn't care less about patient data.

I could potentially sniff traffic on the firewall if it's sent in plain text format and I try hard, which would be extremely dumb as I have my reputation and I'm respected by my clients, including this one. I'm also making good money on Upwork and would not compromise that. 

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

So, again, if somebody wants to help without lmao rofl answers, the question is does HIPAA compliance allow hiring part time employees from other countries. I would have thought that if you send an NDA, confirmation from court and police that I was not arrested or sentenced, etc. it would be fine. But maybe I'm wrong.  Obviously that's why I asked a question. If HIPAA does not allowed unsupervised work, no problem, I can live with that. But Internet and Google, my good friends, didn't provide enough information, so I posted a question here.

I mean, lmao ffs lulz...

Client feels he needs to micromanage my work which is slowing down both of us. My clock is ticking when he goes on lenghty phone calls while I wait around, so I'm not complaning but would still rather do something else, not idly waiting in some occasions. 

Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

Why is her rude post left unchanged and my censored???
Really Upwork?
What a disgrace!
Preston's avatar
Preston H Community Member

re: "Can I work from home (and from another country) in compliance with HIPAA?"

 

Yes. You can.

 

HIPAA has no restrictions against working from home or from another country.

Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

Thank you very much, Preston!
That was all I asked for, not to be lectured from a high moral ground and called, I quote, "rando" from the Internet.
Double standards from Upwork staff are just amazing.
Thank you again.
Petra's avatar
Petra R Community Member


Filip K wrote:
Thank you very much, Preston!
That was all I asked for.

Unfortunately, Jennifer's response is closer to the truth than Preston's.

There are very strict rules, including those that affect the use of contractors. This is something your client needs to clarify in advance.

 

If the issue is that the client is micromanaging, that is an interpersonal issue. If the client is excusing the micromanaging with HIPPA restrictions, the client may or may not be right, but you won't make him less of a micromanager.

 

Preston's avatar
Preston H Community Member

I work with HIPAA-compliant projects nearly every day. From home.

 

Sometimes this is for Upwork clients. Most of the HIPAA-compliant work that I do is not through Upwork.

 

And we have people working from other countries working on our HIPAA-compliant information systems.

 

A basic question was posed, if that is possible. The answer is yes.

 

Providing that basic, accurate answer does not constitute a primer on all things HIPAA.

 

Jennifer was not being rude or anything. Her basic idea was that there is a lot to HIPAA. There are rules and restrictions. Petra: you are correct that there are strict rules associated with HIPAA. But that was not the original poster's question.

Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

It sure was insulting, Preston.

She is implying she is working with clients with HIPAA compliance, but she also says it's unacceptable for clients to work with, I quote, "randos from Internet". So that also implies she is better than me from some reason, as she is cool but I'm a Internet rando :D. It's crazy...

If the premise is not insulting, I don't know what is.

Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

Petra, I understand what you are saying and I can agree, that is why I have posted the question initially as I know those regulations can be strict.

But that doesn't deny the fact her response was very rude (out of nothing) and insulting and preaching, not to mention not being resitricted by Upwork, with mine being. 🙂

Will's avatar
Will L Community Member

Filip,

 

Smarmy often passes for useful on this message board. Ignore it.

 

My perspective is from a different angle than yours, but it is my understanding that no person outside the US can have access to HIPAA-covered data. It isn't a question of professionalism or accidentally getting temporary access, though enforcement might take that into account.

 

Your US client should know the rules and be able to confirm your status for you.

Vladimir's avatar
Vladimir G Community Manager

Hi Filip,

 

Apologies for the late follow up on your post. I'd like to confirm I've escalated your question and our team followed up with you directly with more information. I do see you communicated with our agent.

I understand the issue you've taken with the response we moderated in the meantime and the type of tone we don't allow in the Community. On a personal note, while some users do tend to respond more directly than others, which we do address on our end, from personal experience Jennifer's heart is in the right place at the end of the day. I hope we can all focus on sharing information we'll find mutually benefiting and do thank you for posting your legitimate concern regarding the project in question in the Community.

~ Vladimir
Upwork
Filip's avatar
Filip K Community Member

Thank you, Vladimir.

The issue is solved, thanks.