Friday, August 24, 2007

HIPAA resources

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA is a US federal law that regulates individual and group health insurance policies and establishes standards for electronic health care transactions.

Title II of HIPAA contains the Administrative Simplication (AS) rule which requires the rules that will increase the efficiency of the US health care system thru implementation of standards for the use and dissemination of health care information. Title II bears the most relevance for the medical transcription industry and its practitioners.

To begin with, go to Wikipedia's entry on HIPAA. This will give you an overview on what the law covers. Download a PDF file for a more or less in-depth discussion of the Privacy Rule here.

For an overview of the Security Rule you can go to HIPAAdvisory.com.

The following listed sites covers the basics of HIPAA as it pertains to the medical transcription industry:

Under HIPAA, Medical Transcription Service Organizations or MTSOs, in general, are considered as "Business Associates". A rundown of what a business associate is and the rules and policies regulating business associates are can found at Bricker and Eckler. Their Q&A page has a dropdown list of topics. Just choose "Business Associates" and click "Submit".

Another resource is from West Virginia University. Download the PDF file and read pages one to five. The rest of the document deals with research which are irrelevant.

Last but not the least, download AAMT's document on Safeguarding Protected Health Information which focuses on offsite medical transcriptionists.

I'm hoping that the links and documents provided will help increase your understanding about HIPAA. For those concerned, examination is scheduled on August 29, 2007, Wednesday, 1:00 to 5:00 PM.

No comments: