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PowerSoftMD and HIPAA
HIPAA is the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act of 1996. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of
1996 was signed by President Clinton August 21, 1996 as Public Law 104-191.
Included in the law is a separate section intended to reduce the administrative
costs of health care. Final regulations on transactions and code sets were
released on August 17, 2000 for implementation by October 16, 2002.
It is our understanding that the intent of the law is to improve the
efficiency of the administration of health care, while ensuring the privacy and
security of patient health care information. Software packages per say cannot be
“HIPAA Compliant”, and cannot infer that they are compliant. Our clients need to implement
policies and procedures in there own practices that are outside the scope of
software, to become HIPAA compliant.
The law requires all health plans, including ERISA, health care
clearinghouses and any doctor who transmits health information in an electronic
transaction to use a standard format. Those plans and providers that choose not
to use the electronic standards can use a clearinghouse to comply with the
requirement. Providers' paper transactions are not subject to this requirement.
We recommend that our clients submit all electronic insurance claims through
WebMD or Gateway EDI the nation's largest clearing houses. Both WebMD, and
Gateway EDI, are dedicated to HIPAA compliance. We have a built-in interface to
their Electronic Claims
Submission software. We will keep this interface up to
date with the latest requirements.
At Data Tec we are also dedicated to providing any required enhancements in
Power Soft MD software to help our clients achieve HIPAA compliance. We are
continually enhancing and improving Power Soft MD to meet any new requirements. In
addition, we encourage all our clients to contact us regarding any required or
even perceived requirements that they are concerned with.
We would recommend the following additional resources on HIPAA compliance.
www.gatewayedi.com
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa
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