HIPAA

Healthcare Compliance Understanding Hipaahitech Regulatory Controls

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Security is a major cause of concern in today”s techno savvy global corporate environment. With organizations and healthcare facilities going towards a paperless environment, most of the information transfer and storage is in digital formats. Organizations, healthcare institutions and hospitals are faced with security challenges of their records and personnel. The need to protect the privacy of employees or patients involves a critical issue of the access to the electronic information.

Through a forward looking approach with view to address the current problems of IT compliance and security requirements of the healthcare industry and corporate sectors, various regulatory controls were put in place. This includes healthcare compliance in the form of Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, signed as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Act, besides adding requirements for security breaches, has also laid down security standards for maintaining electronic health records. This Act also expands the privacy provisions beyond the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) Act.

Tthe HIPAA act was enacted in 1996 in the United States among other things to protect the health insurance coverage for employees and their next of kin in case of change of workplace or retrenchment. With the widespread use of electronic data exchange, HIPAA also made provisions for health care providers, insurance companies and employers to confirm to national standards in electronic health care transactions, so as to maintain high level of security. However, since the integrity of data is at risk by technological enhancements, the HIPAA healthcare act has transaction and code rules besides a number of standards and guidelines for the organizations to maintain the privacy and security of sensitive health information.

Though considered a boon to the security of healthcare information, these regulatory systems offer the entities a number of challenges too. The use of compliance management software developed by experts in the field will help organizations streamline and automate compliance initiatives. Further organizations have also made use of smart cards to identify access to the electronic documents. Such holistic enterprise-wide approach is needed for effective controls

Conformance to HIPPA/HITECH regulatory controls ensure Information security and healthcare regulatory compliance. These Acts address the security and privacy issues in healthcare industry. HITECH applies to the business associates too. Under such provisions, the business associates are also accountable for any data breaches and face penalties for non-compliance.

A Professional Answering Service Helps the Healthcare Profession to Enhance Efficiency

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Patient care is of prime importance for all healthcare professionals and doctors. Their activities focus on providing constant attention to patients’ well being. If the job of attending inbound calls to a medical office or a doctor is assigned to a professional answering service, then doctors can pay more attention to their patients.

Overburdened Staff

A busy medical office receives hundreds of calls every day and every caller looks forward to personalized attention and immediate action. It is not practical to burden the reception staff with answering the diverse and innumerable calls which is a complex job and requires special training.

During the peak hours, holidays, or lunch breaks, answering calls becomes difficult and distractive for the substitute personnel who have to manage multiple tasks, affecting the nature and quality of responses. This can affect the image of the doctor or hospital.

Need for Such Services

The generic telephone answering services had lots of shortcomings. This was primarily due to the complex nature of the healthcare sector that needed professional and knowledgeable call agents. These call agents were required to understand the medical jargon or appreciate the significance of diverse protocols of various hospitals and answer the calls with compassion without breaching patients’ or doctors’ confidentiality.

The healthcare answering service industry has evolved to become an indispensable wing of healthcare sector by matching the above expectation and much more. The leading professional answering service providers have created benchmarks to make these services truly an extension of the front office of hospitals or clinics. They are serving doctors irrespective of their specialties by adapting to their individual requirements.

Professional Call Agents

The medical call agents that are employed by the healthcare answering service are thoroughly trained to understand the functions of medical offices, the medical jargon, medical emergencies, and individual protocols. They are also briefed about the HIPAA guidelines and other regulations. Their knowledge is regularly updated, and the calls are screened and reviewed in order to make any improvements in the quality.

Service with Dependability

These service providers are equipped with power back-ups to ensure round-the-clock seamless service. They use cutting-edge technologies to enhance call quality, for message recording, routing, and follow-up. They also have analysis and reporting tools to update you on how the calls of your office are managed.

These services will ensure that your patients will receive the same compassion and dependable service that your front office staff can provide. This will result in enhanced efficiency and flexibility. The value addition a professional answering service offers in terms of dependability, flexibility, privacy and security is much more than the actual costs.

If you are searching for the right professional answering service for your medical office, look no further. Cullens Communications is the top-notch healthcare answering service that renders real value to your patients and your practice. For more details Click Here

HIPAA Training To Safeguard Patient Healthcare Information

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HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This act was introduced to prevent health care fraud and abuse and to protect privacy and confidentiality of health care information.

HIPAA comes in two parts, the title 1 which protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families especially when they change their jobs or in circumstances when they lose their jobs. The title 2 is called administrative simplification which specifies standards for health care transactions, providers, insurance plans and employers.

The HIPAA regulations guide several aspects of health insurance including the providers, insurance plans and employers. A highlighting aspect of HIPAA is the health information privacy and protection.

Since the regulation is stringent and has many legal implications, most companies provide HIPAA training to their employees and award HIPAA certification on successful completion of the training.

The HIPAA training focuses on the customer interaction and data safeguard aspects of insurance and healthcare operations. HIPAA training provides complete information about HIPAA requirement for physical safeguards and technical safeguards.

HIPAA requires that the physical access of protected data be controlled, hardware or software removal from the network be monitored, installed monitors to avoid healthcare information from being intercepted during electronic transfer, ensure safety from unexpected deletion or loss of patient health information, and many more requirements that need to be in place to safeguard patient information.

HIPAA training course can be taken by individual employees or all the employees of a company as a whole. The HIPAA training provides all the information about the compliance deadlines and penalties, about who is affected and how its regulations can be implemented in the job and office. It also covers the guidelines for HIPAA guided privacy of healthcare information.

At the end of HIPAA training, there is a final test which checks the employees’ understanding of the concepts and other details. On passing the test, HIPAA certification will be awarded. HIPAA training covers all the aspects of HIPAA which a person working in the healthcare insurance industry or in any other industry associated with healthcare, needs to know.

A person with HIPAA certification can expect to know HIPAA standards, HIPAA privacy rules, healthcare information security rules and the implementations of HIPAA regulations. HIPAA training also ensures that the company employees understand the nuances well so that the required changes are made in a simple manner, thereby avoiding rework or excessive overhead costs.

HIPAA certification helps ensure that the company, healthcare agency, medical center or insurance company, is compliant with the requirements. This can help in avoiding severe penalties that are payable in case of violation. HIPAA certification also helps in understanding the legislation better and helps in implementing the required changes in a smooth and phased manner so that there is no interruption in the operations.

The requirements of HIPAA in terms of ensuring the safety and security of patient healthcare information are a good step towards protecting confidentiality. Health information is private to the patient, if shared with an unauthorized third party, it may not only hamper the person’s trust and confidentiality it may also lead to unauthorized use of the information in an inappropriate manner. HIPAA certification provides the required groundwork training to implement the act successfully.