Relationship is a variable that appears in the Business Associate Agreement Cover Page, in the Key Terms section. This section is for your agreements' key legal terms.

This term allows you to specify the nature of the relationship between your company (Provider) and your counterparty (Company).

To make the correct selection for this term, you’ll need to understand the nature of the relationship between you and your counterparty. The key question is whether your company is a Business Associate or a subcontractor of a Business Associate.

First, some definitions:

Covered Entities include health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers who electronically transmit any health information in connection with transactions for which HHS has adopted standards.

Business Associates are people or organizations that perform certain functions or activities that involve the use or disclosure of protected health information (PHI) on behalf of, or provide services to, a Covered Entity. This could include companies that host PHI (like a cloud service provider), people or organizations that perform treatment or payment activities on behalf of the Covered Entities, or people or organizations who perform operational tasks that involve the use or disclosure of PHI on behalf of the Covered Entity, like law firms or translational services.

Subcontractors (in the context of a BAA) are a person or organization to whom a Business Associate delegates a function, activity, or service that involves the use or disclosure of PHI. This may be different from how you generally think of and define a subcontractor.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has some helpful resources that explain this terminology in more detail.

There are two options that the Common Paper BAA currently supports:

Use this option if your company is being directly engaged by a Covered Entity to help it carry out its health care activities and functions.

Use this option if your counterparty is a company that is working with Covered Entities directly, but is using your product or services to deliver their services to the Covered Entity.