HIPAA & All you need to Know about the Recent Proposed Changes
Data integrity and its maintenance
are one of the biggest concerns for every medical practice. Any kind of data
breach or violation of the HIPAA regulations can result in huge financial
penalties for your medical practices. In fact, it can cause permanent brand
defamation and worst of everything, loss of patients and their trust in your
practice. 24/7 Medical Billing Services completely understand the seriousness
of this requirement and that’s why is HIPAA compliant.
Apart from maintaining all the
aspects of the RCM process ensuring compliance with HIPAA security regulations,
we will also advise you to make your practice HIPAA
compliant.
All data that we gather from our clients are processed keeping in mind the
compliance requirements. Additionally, we get the HIPAA agreement signed by each
of our clients so that there is no scope for any discrepancy in the future. To stand
on our promises made to our clients, we also keep a close determined eye on the
regular industry changes.
Changes Proposed
to the HIPAA Privacy Rules
Many new HIPAA Privacy Rules have
been proposed by the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) to support the individual’s
engagement in their care. In fact, the purpose of these changes is to remove
any obstacles towards coordinated care and reduce the regulatory burdens on the
medical industry.
Some of the features of these
proposed changes include:
·
Greater
involvement of the family and caregiver in the individual’s patient care who are
experiencing any health crisis or medical emergencies.
·
Enhanced
flexibilities for the disclosures in emergencies or any threatening
circumstances. For instance, Covid-19 public health emergencies and the opioid.
Apart from enhancing patient access
to health information, this proposed rule also aims at reducing the physician’s
burden while sharing patient information with other care providers. Therefore,
these changes are intended to increase care coordination and also allow the
caregivers to develop new ways of innovation in the healthcare practices.
Some other interesting features
that have a direct impact on the healthcare providers are:
·
The
covered practices response time has been shortened by 15 calendar days (from 30
days at present). There is also an opportunity for an extension of a maximum of
15 calendar days (from the current extension of 30 days).
·
Covered
healthcare providers are also required to respond to certain record requests
that are received from other healthcare providers (covered) in case any patient
pursues the right of access to their health plans.
·
The
rule also specifies when the electronic PHI (ePHI) must be offered to an
individual at his or her request at no extra charge.
·
Clarifies
the scope of the covered practice’s abilities for disclosing the PHI to
organizations like social services agencies, home & community-based service
(HCBS) providers, and other related third-party agencies that provide any kind
of health services to facilitate the care and coordination along with case
management for individual patients.
·
Eliminate
the requirement of a written acknowledgment of the receipt from a patient in
case of direct treatment obtained from a healthcare provider against the Notice
of Privacy Practices (NPP).
·
Expansion
of the covered entities’ abilities for disclosing the PHI to avert health
threats or safety when there is “serious and reasonably foreseeable” harm.
These changes are only the proposed
ones with the expectations of many more aspects into the final rule list. Though
you are not supposed to take any action on these proposed changes as of now, it
is important to be aware of these changes and be ready to deal with them once
the final list is out.
Impact of
the HIPAA Privacy Rules
If your practice is well prepared
for these HIPAA Privacy Rules, then you can take an advantage of the following:
Enhance
the Profits
Do you know that non-compliance
costs your practice more than twice the cost of complaining about the
requirements? In fact, as per the research, the practices have experienced
non-compliance issues that have costs them $14.82 million on average. It is a
whopping 45% increase since 2011. That’s why there is a need for the proactive
handling of all such requirements and no one can do this better than the 24/7
Medical Billing Services. Understanding the consequences of HIPAA regulations
and maintaining them from the last many years of practice enable us to operate
smoothly even in this ever-changing RCM Healthcare landscape.
Data
Managing Practices
24/7
Medical Billing Services Software is super secured as they
are built as per the HIPAA regulations. Thereby, they can’t be hacked.
Moreover, we keep every patient's data in a coded system that is extremely
secured. In fact, each member accessing the system must sign the HIPAA Agreement
and take the data security clause with extreme severity. We also understand
that to maintain compliance, each team member must understand and respect other
members and their roles. Therefore, we offer constant training to our team
members to bridge the gap, if any.
Builds the
Patient Trust
With
state-of-the-art technologies and advanced systems, 24/7 Medical Billing
Services allows you to maintain open and two-way communications with all your
patients via the portals. This transparency will help you in building trust
amongst your patients and the other healthcare staff members. Needless to say
that this transparency also allows us to maintain a comfortable business
practice with all our clients.
Helping
you attain the "HIPAA Compliant" Stature
24/7 Medical Billing Services is
HIPAA Compliant and partnering with us for your RCM process will provide you
with a stress-free practice to focus more on the other things that really need
your attention. Our team of experts will handle your RCM
process
as per the compliance requirements and also help your practice in attaining the
HIPAA Compliant Stature. Moreover, we will take you through the various
requirements step-wise and will monitor the process proactively. We will also take
any action that is required to ensure there is no harm to your practice in
terms of trust, time, resources, or revenues.
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