›› Medical Imaging and HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) were enacted in 1996 and had made significant impact on the medical imaging and recording of medical histories.  Any covered entity under HIPAA has to address the need for providing for the framework of security and privacy which governs out sourcing of medical transcriptions, medical imaging and claims processing. The HIPAA directly controls the manner in which the outsourced information has to be securely moved in and out of the covered entity’s premises to the outsourced agency and back after processing. It addresses the safeguard the covered agency must ensure at the outsourced agency place of work.  HIPAA provides for Privacy issues and the Administrative Simplification norms in case of outsourcing.  HIPAA requires that you must fill up all sorts of forms when you visit yr doctor. These are basically HIPAA Privacy forms and are your consent to allow them to send your information for further processing. This does not end with disclosure of privacy forms but HIPAA governs the actions of all those who handle your medical information and ensure s that they take special precautions when it comes to the handling of your private data. These regulations are applicable to medical histories, insurance claims and processing all the information which include your personal data as a part of the data to be processed.

When dealing with any Document Imaging provider it is important that you must ask them about their HIPAA compliance policies and procedures. Each and Every one of the persons employed with them have to  sign an agreement for maintaining confidentiality  stating they are aware that  they are handling other people’s PHI which needs to be kept confidential. The company must have a zero tolerance policy in respect of any breach of privacy of PHI. Due case and necessary precaution must be taken to guarantee that the PHI remains private and secure.