The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, more commonly known as HIPAA, is a group of regulations intended to assure that patients’ private health information is properly protected, while allowing for the secure transfer of that information among health care professionals when the information is needed. Prior to HIPAA, the security level for most patient information was left up to health care facilities. Sadly, some did very little to assure the privacy of sensitive information.
All health care professionals and organizations need to understand the compliance issues, especially when it is related to the scanning and secure storage of patient health records. If you or your organization is considered to be one of the “covered entities” defined under HIPAA, you are responsible for assuring that all access to and transfer of patient records is compliant with strict HIPAA rules. The covered entities include health care providers, health plans and health care clearinghouses.
Medical document scanning service security compliance starts at the point when and where they take possession of patient records. The records are secured at all times while in their possession and en-route to the scanning facility. At the point of delivery to the document scanning facility, trained personnel receive, index, and scan the records. Access to the secure facility is restricted to company employees. The digitally scanned information is securely transferred back to the health care facility. If requested, the paper documents can be stored in secured facility specially designed to safeguard and protect sensitive health care information.
A HIPAA compliant patient records scanning service understands and adheres all aspects of the patient record handling rules required to protect patient information and helps assure that your health care facility is in turn complaint with strict HIPAA regulations. All employees are trained in the proper handling of individually identifiable health information, including during the transfer of paper records to the scanning facility, so that non-authorized persons never have access to the information. In addition, scanning and storage facilities are secured to meet or exceed HIPAA standards to further protect all patient information.
our Certified Electronic Medical Records scanning and storage services.