Iridium and HIPAA

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, Iridium 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: Iridium'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: Iridium 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. Iridium'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.

Iridium 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.

Iridium 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.