Know More about HIPAA and EHR to Ensure Compliance

Know More about HIPAA and EHR to Ensure Compliance With HIPAA-compliant medical transcription, accuracy is ensured for your medical records. Service providers provide error-free & reliable EHR documentation.

The role of healthcare providers is to provide quality care to their patients but they are often busy managing their appointments, and spending long hours on medical documentation on the EHR. This is because the EHR has some set templates and sometimes it becomes difficult to draft an accurate medical report. Physicians are therefore forced to spend a lot of time in front of the computer busy with documentation tasks. But with HIPAA-compliant medical transcription, these medical records can be accurately documented and with HL7 interface these can be uploaded to the physicians’ EHRs. This would remove the burden of documentation on physicians.

A minor error in the medical report can affect the health outcome of the patient and adverse outcomes could lead to malpractice lawsuits that come with a penalty ranging from thousands

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to billions of dollars. Physicians have often been sued not for intentionally made errors but those caused by poorly documented medical records among other reasons. To avoid medical errors, healthcare organizations have rules and regulations to follow and should be HIPAA compliant to ensure that the medical records are accurate.

HIPAA was introduced in 1996 with the aim of making healthcare in America more streamlined, secure and efficient. HIPAA was originally known as the Kennedy- Kassebaum Bill. It is a set of regulations that became law in mid-1996.The two main purposes of HIPAA are: 

Create standards for maintaining medical records to protect and enforce patients’ rights to have their medical records and personal health information (PHI) kept private.

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Help patient’s health insurance move with them and streamline the transfer of medical records from one health care institution to another.

HIPAA compliance applies to: 

Covered entities that provide treatment, operation and payment and it includes doctors, clinics, psychologists, chiropractors, pharmacies, nursing homes, clearing houses, health insurance companies, employer sponsored health plans and HMOs.

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Business associates that access patient information and provides support and this group includes attorneys, consultants, CPA firms, third-party administrators, pharmacy benefits managers, and independent medical transcriptionists.

Penalties for HIPAA violations are steep. Before 2009, violations could lead to a fine of $100. After the implementation of the HITECH Act in 2009, the amount of fine rose up to $50,000. To provide efficient patient care and also to ensure safety of the medical records, all healthcare organizations must be compliant with HIPAA. It establishes a universal protocol for the security and privacy of patient medical information. EHRs pose a large threat to the privacy and security of the patients. With EHR, patients can access their records, and schedule their own appointments. EHR contains crucial information like contact and billing information, consent to release information, personal information like weight, body mass index, height, body temperature, allergies etc, physicians’ notes, appointments, full medical history of the patient, prescription, discharge summaries and so on.

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With all this important information, it is important to protect the data because hacking this system can expose crucial information. So, it is important to that your medical practice or healthcare organization enforces its own HIPAA compliance program, in order to be on the safe side. Here are some tips to ensure better HIPAA compliance. 

Train your employees: Make sure to train your employees to be compliant with HIPAA. This will ensure that the data are in safe hands.

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Use access control: Do not allow unauthorized users to access the EHR data. Every user should be given individual passwords to access patient data.

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Back up your data: Make sure to store all the data in a server. To make sure this complies with HIPAA regulations, it is better to store the information in an HIPAAcompliant cloud server.

Even with EHR systems, healthcare organizations are seeking the help of medical transcriptionists to produce error-free medical reports. Hospitals now prefer a combination of EHR and medical transcription to save physicians time and to get accurate patient records.

Technology has enabled healthcare providers to work more efficiently and smoothly but relying only on technology can be dangerous. The main aim of healthcare industry is to provide quality patient care and maintain accurate medical records. So, investing in a partnership with a HIPAA-compliant medical transcription service is important to ensure accuracy of the medical records, increase the quality of patient care and ensure compliance.

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918-221-7809