Small Healthcare Practices Can Now Go Online to Get Zoom Licenses That Enable HIPAA Compliance

Roughly half of physicians and providers in the U.S. work for small practices with fewer than 10 staff, many of which have been hit hard by financial hardships brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Conducting virtual video visits has helped many of these providers drive revenue and stay afloat.

With experts predicting that telehealth is here to stay post-pandemic, small providers need to adapt their operations and ensure that their chosen video communications platforms enable compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). 

We know that time and efficiency are incredibly valuable for practice owners and managers, which is why we’ve developed a new automated process to help U.S-based small healthcare organizations quickly enter into a business associate agreement (BAA) to enable HIPAA compliance on their Zoom account.

With this new process, you can sign up for a Zoom Pro plan or upgrade your Zoom Basic account to a Pro plan with up to nine licenses enabling HIPAA compliance and accept a BAA online. Here’s how it works.

1. Visit our Zoom for Healthcare webpage and click the Buy Now button at the top of the screen. If you have a Zoom Basic account, click Upgrade Account from your Billing page or our Plans & Pricing page.
2. Select the number of meeting licenses you want to purchase. Our online BAA covers up to nine licenses in the U.S. — if you need more than that, you can contact our sales team for assistance.
3. Under Choose your plan, check the box to Accept a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and Enable HIPAA Compliance. 
4. Choose to add on features and products like Zoom Phone or cloud storage for meeting recordings.
5. Create your account and complete your order. That’s it!

Here are just a few ways our new BAA process and healthcare license can benefit your small practice:

Practices of all sizes have to balance care delivery with time-consuming administrative tasks, but smaller practices don’t have the resources of a larger hospital or health system to scale these processes. An automated BAA process helps administrators of small practices self-serve and set up their providers and staff with Zoom quickly and efficiently.

Our BAA gives you access to other products and features that enable HIPAA compliance on our platform like Zoom Phone, cloud recording, and Zoom Team Chat logs. Zoom Phone makes sense for small healthcare organizations because of its affordability and ease of use, and as a cloud-based phone system, it offers tons of enterprise features like call recording, call flip, call queues, and outbound caller ID management. 

Our BAA enables HIPAA compliance and helps you keep protected health information (PHI) secure and private, whether you’re using Zoom for telehealth visits with patients or care coordination discussions with other providers. Data is protected with AES encryption and you can also control meeting privacy and security with Waiting Rooms, required passcodes, and locked room functionality.

By accepting a BAA, you can manage phone, video communications, and chat on one platform. This unified communications approach makes it easier for practices without dedicated IT staff to provision and manage licenses on a single dashboard.

At Zoom, we believe solo and small practices should have access to the same innovative, high-quality telehealth platform and communications solutions as the largest health systems and centers of excellence. As patients’ preferences and needs evolve, we’re happy to help healthcare providers adapt while keeping care quality and security top of mind. Learn more about how we enable HIPAA compliance with our healthcare license.

Watch our on-demand webinar, “Zoom Platform for Healthcare: Small Practices & Clinics,” for more on the automated BAA process.