HIPAA

To address these security concerns in the healthcare and electronic field, the United States Congress passed HIPAA "The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act", a set of standards that simplify electronic transactions and define minimum requirements for network security. As healthcare organizations strive to leverage the Internet, they need to deploy a security architecture to meet government regulations and ensure the trust of patients.

The Administrative Simplification section of HIPAA is designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system by standardizing the electronic data for specified administrative and financial transactions while protecting the security and confidentiality of that information.

As a health care provider it is important to implement HIPAA and keep it's policies current as well as provide annual training to employees. It is advisable that you create forms informing your patients about office policies in regards to their medical information. Such forms should include:

• Place where their files are stored
• Who has access to their files
• Name, address, and contact information of your billing service
• Name of the healthcare clearinghouse claims are processed through
• Method of transmission of claims

• Create Employee and Patient Forms
• Establish Employee Computer Policy
• Disaster Recovery Plan
• Off Site Data Backup
• Contingency Operations Plan
• Annual HIPAA Training
• Employee Computer Monitoring Software