If you run a medical business, HIPPA compliancy is absolutely essential. HIPPA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and it has to do with protecting the privacy and medical records of patients in the United States. This rule is very important and it is essential to have a HIPPA compliant answering service for medical businesses.
What is HIPPA?
In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The first part or Type I of the act allows people to keep their health care coverage after they have been terminated from a job. It also amended several other acts like the Public Health Service Act and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. However, this part of the law has little to do with do with HIPPA compliant answering service rules and regulations.
Type II of the act is all about patient privacy and this is why medical practices have to be very careful about the way they store and use personal information of their patients. Complying with HIPPA not only applies to medical practices but also companies offering medical billing services. In fact, any business handling healthcare data is affected. The HIPPA privacy rule has been in effect since 2003.
How Does HIPPA Affect Answering Services?
An answering service does not send billing information nor does it treat patients. However, answering services and systems handle important calls and many of them deal with medical details and information protected under the Privacy Act of HIPPA.
So how could an answering system violate privacy laws? Suppose someone called a medical practice and was able to access messages? This would be an invasion of patient privacy. To avoid this type of problem, a HIPPA compliant answering service must have security measures in place to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the phone system.
Unauthorized access is an important issue with answering systems, because medical professionals often have the need to access their messages from remote locations. This includes email and text messages too. These systems must be password protected, secure, and not easy to circumvent.
How to Recognize a HIPPA Compliant Answering Service
It is not difficult to tell if a service complies with all the United States privacy laws. Contact the service and ask them about their HIPPA compliance qualifications. They should provide encrypted data transmission services and a company official which has been properly trained in HIPPA compliancy. If not, you could be placing yourself in danger, because you are ultimately the one responsible for maintaining privacy.
No More Phone Tag is a HIPAA complaint answering service offering affordable monthly rates and answering service solutions to medical professionals.
