Business Associate Agreement (BAA)
A HIPAA-required contract between a covered entity and a vendor that creates, receives, or processes protected health information on the covered entity's behalf.
Under HIPAA, a covered entity (hospital, health plan, healthcare clearinghouse) must enter into a Business Associate Agreement with any vendor — a "business associate" — who creates, receives, maintains, or transmits protected health information (PHI) in the course of providing services. The BAA requires the business associate to implement appropriate HIPAA safeguards, report breaches, and restrict PHI use to the purposes specified in the agreement.
BAAs are not optional. Operating without a required BAA exposes both the covered entity and the business associate to HIPAA civil monetary penalties. For technology vendors serving the healthcare market, having a BAA template ready and executing it before handling any PHI is a regulatory baseline, not a premium offering. Document intelligence helps healthcare organizations track which of their vendor relationships have executed BAAs, verify that existing BAAs include all required HIPAA elements, and identify vendors handling PHI without a BAA in place.
Related Terms
More compliance Terms
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The European Union regulation governing how organizations collect, process, store, and protect personal data.
SOC 2
An auditing framework that evaluates an organization's controls for security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
HIPAA
The U.S. federal law that establishes standards for protecting sensitive patient health information.
Audit Trail
A chronological record of system activities that provides documentary evidence of the sequence of actions performed.
Data Privacy
The practice of handling personal information in accordance with legal requirements and individual expectations about data use.
PCI DSS
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard — a set of requirements for organizations that handle credit card information.
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