RST Technology DMS Hosted Document Management System for the Healthcare Industry
Healthcare Document Management must embrace federal requirements of HIPAA Compliance. This information will explain how medical practitioners and healthcare entities such as doctor’s offices, clinics, hospitals, HMOs and pharmacies can utilize document management software such as RST Technology DMS to achieve compliance with HIPAA.
HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA is a federal guideline that aims to ensure that patient information and records are protected and maintain their integrity. HIPAA consists of three parts; a transactions element that is designed to get users to submit claims in a specific electronic manner rather than on paper. A privacy element that is designed to protect patients’ medical details. And lastly, a security element to make sure unauthorized persons cannot access the data.
HIPAA compliance is required of all healthcare providers, payers and clearinghouses. Providers include hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, private practice physicians, dentists and suppliers. Payers include group health plans insurers, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), Medicare / Medicaid, and government healthcare programs. Clearinghouses include billing service providers, re-pricing companies and value-added networks. In short, all healthcare organizations in the United States need to develop a HIPAA compliance strategy.
HIPAA places increasing pressure on organizations to store and appropriately manage electronic documents and other types of content. HIPAA requires a wide range of healthcare documents to be kept for specified periods of time and also imposes strict data disposal processes. It also establishes restrictions for access to patient documents and information. The first step in the process of implementing HIPAA compliance is a thorough risk assessment. The follow on steps are developing a detailed action plan, implementation and administration of the plan, and an ongoing audit.
You will most likely need to perform separate assessments for your business, transactions and security. Each assessment must include policy, procedure and practice evaluations. You must document these measures up to and beyond specific deadlines, and audits will cover policy and procedure.
To be compliant, organizations must satisfy the intent of the law. They must have the mechanism in place that guarantees safe electronic storage, access and transmission of patient records.
Your Healthcare organization must become HIPAA compliant; our DMS platform can be used to help your organization in its efforts to meet these federally mandated storage, management and security requirements of your patient’s records. It is important to note that there are aspects of HIPAA which are beyond the scope of document management software.