The Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is having
a profound impact on the healthcare industry. HIPAA mandates
the establishment of standards governing the security and
privacy of individually identifiable protected health information
(PHI) that is electronically transmitted or maintained by
providers, payers and clearinghouses.
While, HIPAA does not address medical transcription or
medical transcriptionists directly, it does, however, state
that any business or individual who provides services to
a "Covered Entity" (hospital, clinic, etc.) will
be deemed to be a "Business Associate" for HIPAA
purposes if they access PHI during the course of their work.
Business Associates must take steps, and document those
steps, to secure and keep confidential the PHI while it
is in their custody.
As your business partner, Accentia will mirror the responsibilities
you have as a Business Associate and can even help you achieve
HIPAA compliance. Three of the most important features of
the proposed regulations - as they relate to medical transcription
- cover the subjects of transmission, protection and accountability
of PHI.
Transmission: Accentia's system is designed for secure,
fully encrypted transmission of PHI in both voice and text
formats. Currently, the following secure formats are in
operation, all of which ensure 128-bit encryption - Companion;
secure FTP; secure HTTP and a number of proprietary solutions
developed by existing clients.
Protection: Accentia takes a multi-faceted approach to protection
of PHI while in its domain. Access to data by company personnel
and third party contractors is controlled both by clear
protocols and contracts detailing privacy requirements as
well as sophisticated username/password rule-sets which
ensure clear data segregation and limited access as required
solely to perform work required.
Accountability: All employees and contractors are trained
on privacy requirements and compliance is ensured via contract
and ongoing audit procedures. Accentia's proprietary workflow
engine provides a point-to-point audit trail for every individual
job, enabling the company to manage compliance with its
privacy procedures at each step of the transcription process.
Accentia is leading the industry in ensuring compliance
with HIPAA within a distributed workflow model designed
to bridge the growing gap between demand for transcription
services and the shrinking supply of qualified medical transcriptionists
in the USA. As long as all work can be transmitted and protected
in the ways described above and accountability ensured,
then compliance will have been fully met by the Business
Associate.
Accentia is committed to exceeding HIPAA compliance regulations.
We not only look at current requirements but anticipate
for future requirements in order to stay one step ahead.
We will continue to expand our technology to provide our
clients with the latest in PHI security.
