HIPAA Pre-Deployment Compliance Check

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Reviewing a pipeline before it touches real patient data
• Documenting safeguards for a BAA or security questionnaire
• Choosing between Safe Harbor and Expert Determination de-identification

Example prompts

• “Run a HIPAA gap analysis on this patient-intake pipeline before we deploy.”
• “Which safeguards are we missing for our BAA with this vendor?”
• “Help me document minimum-necessary controls for this audit.”

Workflow steps

2 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Safe Harbor — remove all 18 identifier categories and have no actual
2. 2Expert Determination — a qualified statistician certifies "very small"

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 34d7b8c. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are python).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • hhs.gov
  • ecfr.gov
  • healthit.gov
  • csrc.nist.gov

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

HIPAA Pre-Deployment Compliance Check loads about 2k tokens when it runs, and up to ~3.4k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 231 tokens; SKILL.md has 738 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~231

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~2k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~3.4k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from maziyarpanahi/openmed at commit 34d7b8c, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© maziyarpanahi). 738 words, ~2,037 tokens.

name

checking-hipaa-compliance

description

Runs a HIPAA Privacy and Security Rule checklist over a data pipeline and produces a gap report before deploying OpenMed on PHI. Use when the user is about to process protected health information, needs a pre-deployment compliance review, wants to know which administrative, physical, and technical safeguards apply, is scoping a Business Associate Agreement, or must document minimum-necessary and de-identification controls. Trigger keywords: HIPAA, Privacy Rule, Security Rule, 45 CFR 164, PHI, BAA, business associate, minimum necessary, safeguards, Safe Harbor, Expert Determination, gap analysis, compliance review. Pairs adjacent to OpenMed: the checklist shows where openmed.deidentify and signed audit reports satisfy the de-identification and audit-control requirements. The control list lives in references/hipaa-checklist.md. This is a structured self-assessment aid, not legal advice.

license

Apache-2.0

metadata.project

OpenMed

metadata.category

compliance-regulatory

metadata.pairs

adjacent

metadata.version

1.0

import openmed

# A representative record from the pipeline (synthetic — never log real PHI).
sample = "John Doe (MRN 1234567), DOB 1970-01-15, seen 2024-03-02 in Boston."

# 1) De-identify on-device under the Safe Harbor policy.
result = openmed.deidentify(sample, method="replace", policy="hipaa_safe_harbor")
print(result.deidentified_text)        # identifiers removed/surrogated

# 2) Produce the signed, no-PHI audit record for the compliance file.
report = openmed.deidentify(sample, policy="hipaa_safe_harbor", audit=True)
report.sign(b"<release-hmac-key-from-vault>", key_id="hipaa-2026")

# 3) Walk the checklist (see references/hipaa-checklist.md) and record gaps.
controls = {
    "encryption_at_rest": True,
    "encryption_in_transit": True,
    "access_controls_rbac": True,
    "audit_logging": True,          # satisfied in part by the signed AuditReport
    "minimum_necessary": False,     # <-- gap: pipeline pulls full notes
    "baa_in_place": True,
    "deidentification_method": "safe_harbor",
}
gaps = [name for name, ok in controls.items() if not ok]
print("GAPS:", gaps)

© maziyarpanahi, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in skills/checking-hipaa-compliance of maziyarpanahi/openmed.

• SKILL.md
• references/hipaa-checklist.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 34d7b8c