The pressure on the healthcare
industry across the world including US is on the rise as regards delivery of
better quality of patient care and to bring about reduction in costs. Medical
IT solutions like claims processing system, practice management software, EMR
(electronic medical records), EHR (electronic health records), etc. are proving
to be handy in achieving the above goal. The technology is helping to make life
easier for doctors, hospitals as well as patients. However, the problem being
there are a large no. of vendors offering a wide range of medical IT solutions.
A particular system may be suitable for the practice and other may not. In
absence of some sort of standardization and guidelines the optimal results can
not be expected. Here, comes the role of HIPAA compliant solutions that are
developed as per the HIPAA guidelines and set of rules.
HIPAA stands for “Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act”, the act was enacted in 1996. Title
I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families
when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, known as the
Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of
national standards for electronic health care transactions and national
identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. Basically
HIPAA is a regulatory body that provides guidelines as one of its functions as
regards the development of healthcare IT systems ultimately known as HIPAA compliant solutions.
HIPAA compliant solutions provide
a no. of safeguards as against a non-HIPAA compliant / un-standardized
healthcare IT system:
1) Administrative Safeguards -
policies and procedures designed to clearly show how the entity will comply
with the act.
2) Physical Safeguards –
controlling physical access to protect against inappropriate access to
protected data.
3) Technical Safeguards – controlling
access to computer systems and enabling covered entities to protect
communications containing PHI transmitted electronically over open networks
from being intercepted by anyone other than the intended recipient.
Information systems housing PHI
must be protected from intrusion. When information flows over open networks,
some form of encryption must be utilized. If closed systems/networks are
utilized, existing access controls are considered sufficient and encryption is
optional. And many other guidelines that ensure safety and security of data,
standardization of system by introducing functional features and so on.
If we sum up, HIPAA compliant solutions ensure better safety and security of data, standardization,
functional features and inclusion of other privacy policy / procedures that can
be helpful in achieving the optimum utilization of the system.
