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Although the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy standard became effective in April, hospitals will be improving and refining their HIPAA policies for some time to come.
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While providing headaches to many health care professionals across the nation, the challenges of HIPAA implementation led to a promotion and career expansion for at least one access services director.
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As hospitals fine-tune their HIPAA compliance policies and procedures, savvy access managers continue to find the Internet a rich source of information. Its particularly helpful for those who might still be involved in a crash course in HIPAA readiness.
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Medical Banking Project founder John Casillas says that one of the changes in the final HIPAA security rule eliminated any requirement to encrypt electronically transmitted protected health information, even over the Internet or other open networks.
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San Francisco-area attorney Steven Fleisher, who is HIPAA consultant to the California Medical Association and provides compliance services to providers and employers, says that health care providers working in solo and small groups have the fewest resources available to deal with HIPAA compliance and are experiencing fear and loathing on the HIPAA trail.
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When an orthopedic resident was paged repeatedly to assess a patient with an open fracture of the forearm, he failed to respond. The resident was paged multiple times and took more than an hour to get to the emergency department (ED).
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The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations recent announcement that it will switch to unannounced surveys beginning January 2006 means quality improvement professionals will have to dramatically change the way they think about compliance with standards and ensure that the rest of the organization follows suit.
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Quality improvement and peer review professionals must continue to focus on Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance long after the deadlines pass, say experts, who caution that protecting sensitive data will be a constant worry even after you have the appropriate mechanisms in place.
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A quality improvement project in Dayton, OH, achieved a 36% drop in mortality from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) among a group of hospitals cooperating on the effort, and participants say it could not have been done without high-quality data collection by peer review and quality improvement professionals.
