Showing posts with label HIPAA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HIPAA. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

RISK ASSESSMENT BASICS AND DO EXPERTS HELP?

4:32 AM Aditya

What is a HIPAA Risk Assessment?
Title II of HIPAA, known as the “Administrative Simplification provisions”, requires practices to follow a set of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. A HIPAA Risk Assessment is a process that helps ensure that the practice is following the set of national standards. These standards cover everything from the IT side to the physical layout of the practice and to the administrative side of the practice.

Why do a HIPAA Risk Assessment?
As stated within the requirements for Meaningful Use, a practice must “conduct or review a security risk analysis and implement security updates as necessary and correct identified security deficiencies as part of its risk management process”. This means that in order to meet the requirements for Meaningful Use, your practice must conduct at least one security assessment to prove that your practice is HIPAA compliant. Your patients will feel more comfortable as well knowing that their medical records are safe with you. The cost of not being HIPAA compliant can be devastating, with a maximum penalty of $250,000 and 10 years imprisonment.

How can a partner get you prepared for an actual audit?

Technical Doctor has completed 20+ different types of risk assessments with 100% satisfaction from all of our clients. We break down every aspect of your practice and inspect every possible security flaw in your practice. After the assessment, we will provide you with documentation that proves that your practice has met all of HIPAA’s requirements as well as documentation stating what your practice needs to actively do to stay HIPAA compliant.  In the event that your practice is audited, you will have all of the documentation you need to prove that you are HIPAA compliant on hand.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Is your Medical Biller knowledgeable?

8:27 AM Aditya


These days most healthcare professionals prefer cost-effective medical care payments solutions as opposed to maintaining in-house payments staff to obtain highest possible earnings. Outsourcing their payments to reputable and experienced payments assistance allows them to improve their income without spending their time gathering insurance coverage and individual balances. An organization should consider several items that will help them evaluate the agreement between them and the medical care payments organization.

A few advantages of out-sourced medical care biller solutions are as follows:
·         An organization can utilize payments solutions on a percent of the selections which indicates that the payments organization is motivated to collections as it will improve their income.  It also indicates that the money we out monthly is solely dependent on the income generated, keeping payments fees in direct alignment with selections received.

·         In-house payment costs are hard costs as they are the same each month regardless of how well the selections are. Freelancing also allows us to focus on our medical center and our patients’ care. Having a medical care payments organization which uses a team of experienced people to complete our payment guarantees precise medical care payments solutions that fit within our budget.

·         Utilizing a medical care payments organization can lead to higher earnings as such companies are experienced in examining payments for correct programming and compensation rates and can be aggressive in gathering payments owed to the physician.   Having more than one pair of eyes looking at our payments is essential in having a check and balance system for our payments.  A good medical care payments organization indicates many billers on the back end to control our payments efficiently. 

·         Hiring medical care payments solutions allows a medical center to focus on its company.  When the worry of how the money is coming in to run the exercise is eliminated, the doctor’s energy can be directed at individual care.

·         Some payment solutions also offer consulting to help practice in payments procedures and changes in programming and payments.  Such knowledge may help us to improve exercise efficiency and project a positive image to patients thus encouraging an increased number of patients to visit our medical center.

Services we can request from outsourced biller can include individual registration, insurance coverage registration, insurance coverage eligibility verification, a / r follow-up, charge access, payment, refusal analysis, organizing and closing, a / r control and report maintenance. Apart from urgent physician payment solutions, medical care payments are available in almost all specialties.

Benefits we can expect from medical billing services

A medical care payments organization can make our exercise more profitable. This is why the majority of the doctors approach dependable medical care payments experts to avail of value-added medical care payments solutions. If we want to gain the most from physician payments solutions, then it is essential to choose the right medical care payments organization. With so many companies in the industry, it is quite challenging for us to find the one that best suits our need. We have to carry out a comprehensive search and assessment to find a dedicated company of urgent physician payments and other specialty payments solutions. Physician payment solutions play a significant role when it comes to improving income and helping the way methods functions. Medical biller solutions cover statements distribution, charge access, refusal control, payment publishing, tracking of records, appointment organizing and closing, payments and reconciling of records, individual registration, individual organizing and reminders, financial control reporting, AR control (insurance and patient),  medical care programming audits, insurance coverage verifications; insurance coverage authorizations and adherence to reject statements.

How to find whether our medical biller is knowledgeable?

Only a professional and experienced payments service provider can help streamline our income pattern. 

Following are some key factors which are to be kept in mind before hiring one.
•The biller should effectively streamline the company process.
• They should allow us to pay attention to our primary company of providing excellent medical care, which in turn, guarantees better individual satisfaction.
• They should help us in saving time and energy and help us in increasing our productivity.
• Reducing functional costs and mistakes usually associated with in-house medical care payments.
• Benefiting from the technology. Medical payment solutions for doctors are performed using the latest payment software.
• Saving cost of employee benefits, such as pay check taxes, medical care work place, wellness insurance coverage, paid vacation etc.
• Providing highest possible compensation of our statements with fast turnaround.
• Avoiding costly payment errors
• Accelerating cash flow
• Reducing records receivable
• Providing regular follow-up for all our claims

HIPAA compliance is important!

When signing up for physician payment solutions, we should always have an agreement with a HIPAA-compliant outsourcing organization. This would assure confidentiality of individual and exercise information in accordance with the norms laid down by HIPAA.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

How Can Computer Viruses Affect Your Medical Practice?

9:20 PM Nrip Nihalani

As healthcare becomes increasingly dependent on information technology, system breakdowns due to viruses, worms and other malware can potentially stall the entire working of your practice. This article aims to discuss how practitioners can protect their computers against viruses to ensure the safety and confidentiality of their data systems.

What are Computer Viruses?

A virus is simply a software program or a piece of code that is developed to spread and break into computer systems to consume available memory, corrupt or erase data and eventually cause the system to stop working. 

There are many types of malware and computer viruses and they vary in characteristics, disguises and potency to breach security and spread across networks. 

Computer viruses are nowadays commonly spread by attachments in emails or IM messages. They can also be disguised as attractive images, lucrative discount deals, lottery announcements and other audio-visual files that are likely to arouse user-curiosity and consequent click or download response. Computer viruses and malware are easily spread using free Internet downloads and pirated or illegal programs and files. 

A computer virus infection can be detected from typical symptoms like lowered system speed, frequent hanging or freezing, unprecedented restarts, improper or sluggish functioning of applications, inaccessibility of disk or drives, unusual error messages, missing programs etc.
Even though these indicators may hint at other hardware or software problems, the safest option in such a situation is to run an anti-virus check and contact your data security provider.

How Can Computer Viruses Affect Your Practice?

EMRs and other electronic healthcare data systems hold confidential patient information and practitioners are responsible for their privacy, safety and security. Data theft, loss and system breakdowns due to virus attacks can be very detrimental to a practice and can even put people’s lives in danger.

While effective backup systems and regularly updated anti-virus software can help you avert these debacles, medical professionals must be informed about the repercussions and penalties that HIPAA mandates in case they fail to protect medical information. The federal law treats medical data security as a legal requirement and any compromise on this front is a punishable offense. HIPAA has also released guidelines to assist practitioners and data security professionals in building unbreachable data systems that protect electronic medical data in EMR and other software.

What Can You Do To Prevent Virus Attacks?

A comprehensive data security plan involves regularly updated system security, frequent data backups, employee education and effective administrative policies that regulate the use and accessibility of medical IT systems.

Antivirus Software

When implementing your EMR, ensure that your server and workstations are adequately protected against malware. There are many effective virus protection software programs that help shield your system from viruses, malware and spyware. Ideally, these virus protection programs must be installed and regularly updated as soon as you get your IT infrastructure in place, with or without the EMR. Some antivirus programs are freely available for download online (with paid premium versions) while others can be purchased for a fee. 

We list some of the most effective virus protection software programs that are popular for medical IT security.

1. ESET NOD32
Information: http://www.eset.com/

2. KASPERSKY
Information: http://www.kaspersky.com/

3. BIT DEFENDER
Information: http://www.bitdefender.com/

4. QUICK HEAL
Information: http://www.quickheal.com/

5. NORTON INTERNET SECURITY
Information: http://us.norton.com/

In the free to download segment, the most popular antivirus software programs are,

1. AVG
Information: http://www.freeavg.com/?lng=in-en&cmpid=corp

2. AVAST
Information: http://www.avast.com/index

3. AVIRA
Information: http://www.avira.com/
You may also ask your local computer vendor or EMR provider to guide you on the most appropriate protection program for your practice. Many reputable EMR vendors include antivirus and security programs in their services at no additional fee or cost of resources.

Data Backup Systems

Regular backups are an absolute must in order to prevent the loss of crucial medical information to disruptive computer viruses. All data must be backed up on remote servers that are professionally managed by data security experts. With a backup system in place, even if your local server were to get infected and your data were to get erased or corrupted, you would still have all your information secure and intact on this remote server.

Along with antivirus and data backup systems, practitioners and healthcare staff must adopt the following practices in order to build the practice’s defense against unprecedented virus attacks. 
1. Routers and wireless internet connections must be protected with strong, unbreachable password keys.
2. Install firewalls and always keep them on.
3. Do not download attachments or click links from unknown email messages, IMs and social media sites unless you are expecting them. 
4. Do not respond to unusual virus attack warnings from unrecognized sources or download rogue programs that offer to heal the virus. More often than not, they are viruses disguised a antivirus software. 
5. Do not be lured into downloading malware hidden in funny images and unknown audio/video files. Only download from trusted sources and websites.
6. Regularly install updates for all your software. Subscribe to automatic updates if available. 
7. Passwords should be strong and kept confidential. They should ideally include a combination of letters, numbers and symbols and be at least 14 characters long. Staff should be advised to memorize them instead of noting them down somewhere. Also, each application should have a unique password that is not repeated elsewhere in another application, website or program. 
8. Be cautious while using flash drives. Ensure that they are virus-free before running them on your system.


References: