Helping Healthcare Organizations Meet the Standards

Healthcare is document-driven. Millions of patient case histories, standardized forms, agreements, legal documents, and more are handled by health care and insurance providers every day. And they're transmitted between hospitals and clinics, between doctors' offices and private testing labs. In an era of increasing identity theft, fraud, and the potential abuse of personal information pooled in vast, central clearinghouses, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) helps to ensure that personal medical information stays private – and under the patient's control.

According to the finalized HIPAA privacy guidelines, "covered entities must protect individually identifiable health information against deliberate or inadvertent misuse or disclosure . . . health plans and providers must maintain administrative and physical safeguards to protect the confidentiality of health information as well as protect against unauthorized access."

The HIPAA legislation has teeth: civil penalties for privacy breaches can extend to $25,000 and criminal penalties for misuse of information can reach as high as $250,000 and a 10-year prison term. Clearly, organizations must take action to review their internal information processes and procedures, if for no other reason than to reduce their exposure to legal liability.

But as document chains get longer and more complex, the potential for all or part of a confidential record to be accidentally disclosed increases.

Even with sophisticated electronic forms, databases and document imaging systems in place, most healthcare and insurance providers rely on paper for lowest-common-denominator compatibility between organizations, and for the legal standing of signatures on paper. And if paper isn't going away soon, there will always be a need to be able to send documents via fax. Sagem-Interstar's XMediusFAX^® family of products provide practical solutions for meeting these HIPAA requirements.

HIPAA Compliance

XMediusFAX^® helps organizations meet the following sections of the HIPAA standards:

45 CFR 164.502

Providing reasonable safeguards against incidental disclosure of private information

45 CFR 164.524 + .528
Providing fast, reliable access to healthcare information for patients and researchers

NPRM 42 CFR 142.308
Providing administrative and technical policies and procedures for information security

45 CFR 160.502(e), 160.514(e), 160.524(a)
Exchanging confidential information with third-party business partners in a secure manner