e-Backups
can help medical services, practitioners and
other organizations reach HIPAA compliance
for secure off-site storage of electronic
records.
HIPAA
background
As you know, in 1996, Congress
enacted the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA). The legislative
goals of HIPAA were to mandate the industry
to implement procedures to reduce the administrative
costs of healthcare, develop standard transactions
for consistency in the industry, promote security
and confidentiality of patient records and
to provide incentive for the healthcare industry
to use electronic communications to make patient
records available no matter where the patient
was being treated - a process that takes days
with manual records - and particularly useful
in emergencies. All health care providers,
insurance providers, health care clearinghouses
or health plans that electronically maintains
or transmits health information pertaining
to an individual must comply with HIPAA regulations.
One
of the HIPAA
mandates
requires
those in the healthcare industry to have an
off-site backup of critical data and a contingency
plan to access this data.
HIPAA
Contingency Planning
By working with e-Backups a medical practice,
provider or medical information chain participant
has a chance to become in compliance with
HIPAA. Our service supports specific areas
of compliance including:
The
functionality of e-Backups combined with the
proper implementation of policies and procedures
can provide the core data backup and contingency
planning requirement with the ease that few
other solutions can deliver. With
the deadline approaching look
to e-Backups to provide this critical
piece.
Every
practitioner, be they doctor, clinic, hospital,
testing lab, surgery center, or any of the
other organizations that provides services
to individuals and stores patient medical
records, must backup to a secure, encrypted
off-site location by mid 2005.
IMPORTANT:
No software product or solution will make
your organization HIPAA compliant! Compliance
is primarily a matter of office policies and
procedures, most of which are not technology
based. e-Backups and other companies can provide
you with tools to assist you in achieving
compliance, but it is up to you to configure
and deliver those tools in a fashion appropriate
to your organization's structure, size, and
needs.
