Business Associates

Business Associates are persons or entities outside of BU that provide services to the BU Health Plans or any of the BU Covered Components and who may need to access, use, create or disclose HIPAA Protected Health Information in order to provide those services.  Policy 3.9 of the HIPAA Policy Manual covers Business Associates in more detail but we provide some guidance here.

We do not need to get a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with a provider we are coordinating care with.  For example, if the 930 Dental Health Center wants to send fabrication requests to a lab who only does fabrication, we do not need a BAA with the lab.  However, if we are sending fabrications to a lab, whose cloud based platform can also be used to store and analyze data or to send fabrications to other labs or entities, we do need a BAA with the lab because they do more than simply provide us fabrications.

We do not need to get a BAA with a software vendor if we are simply purchasing software that will go on computers used by dentists or providers.  However, we do need a BAA with the software vendor or supplier if they will provide support for the software (e.g., remote access provided by Dental IT using TeamViewer).

All purchases by BU HIPAA Components – outside small office purchases below $3000 – should be handled by BU Sourcing & Procurement.  They will obtain the BAA along with negotiating and signing the contract for you.   New to working with Sourcing and Procurement?  Take their training here.

BU Sourcing and Procurement will review purchases by BU HIPAA Components and include our template BAA when it makes sense to include one.  But try to give them a heads up that a BAA should accompany the contract by leaving a comment or note in Guided Buying.  Sourcing and Procurement will fill out and use our approved BU Template BAA, and when a vendor asks for changes, Sourcing and Procurement works with the Chief Healthcare Compliance and Privacy Officer who will review the changes.

The BU template Business Associate Agreement is found here: Business Associate Agreement Template 2 9 2022