[WHITE PAPER] Using Electronic Document Delivery Technology To Enhance HIPAA Compliancy

With only the rarest exceptions, everyone becomes a patient and enters the health care system. Usually starting at childhood and continuing on into old age, we fill out thousands of forms for doctors, insurance companies, hospitals, and on and on.

At any given time, dozens of different organizations control documents containing personal and medical information, and we assume that our doctors, hospitals, insurers, and employers keep this information under lock and key while making referrals, performing procedures, and administrating billing and appointments. Considering the sensitive nature of the information we share, it’s amazing how much faith the average patient places in the medical industry when it comes to security and privacy.

While the healthcare industry does make privacy a top priority, the system itself has eroded slowly due to a dependence on old, incompatible technology; a general lack of standards governing privacy and security; and a massive bureaucracy where human error (and sometimes malicious intent) can flourish.

Like an old dam, healthcare had developed numerous leaks while a finite number of fingers exist to plug the holes. Put together, these weaknesses have resulted in a growing number of cases where private patient data is lost, sent to the wrong location, and sometimes seen by the wrong eyes. Aside from the obvious concern over patient privacy, health care organizations spend millions of dollars correcting mistakes in addition to the overall management of the bureaucracy.

The growing severity of this problem was recognized and addressed by Congress and the healthcare industry in the mid 1990s, resulting in the passage Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA). …

Launch PDF file.

[This article was written for Quadrant Software between 2001 and 2005]

Tags: document management, HIPAA, technology, White Paper