Hipaa rules on scanning medical documents

HIPAA Rules on Scanning Medical Documents HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was issued by the U.S. department of health and human services in the year 1996. This act was passed in order to keep the health information of patients confidential. The Privacy Rule aims to protect health information of individuals while at the same time allowing this information to be shared among healthcare providers to ensure the person’s health and well-being.

These days, healthcare centers and hospitals prefer scanning patients’ records and storing them in the form of soft copy rather than maintaining paper files. In huge hospitals there are many patients who get admitted at the same time. It is not very easy to store every file in the form of a hard copy. Also with time, the files get damaged. Thus to preserve these files and access them from any location, healthcare centers and hospitals go for medical document scanning. When documents are scanned and stored on the computers, they can be easily accessed from anywhere and at anytime. When choosing a document scanning service, healthcare providers have to enter into contracts with them, contracts that are designed to protect PHI. HIPAA requires business associates to provide assurance that they will: 

Not reveal or use patient health information other than as allowed by the contract or required by law.

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Implement appropriate safeguards to protect patient healthcare information.

Document Scanning Services Compliant with HIPAA A document conversion company in the U.S has to observe the following to remain compliant with HIPAA. 

Provide training to its entire workforce on HIPAA regulations.

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Ensure that only trained and authorized personnel receive, index and scan the records.

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Make sure that the medical documents are secured at all times, during file transfer to the scanning facility and back to the client.

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The records should be received, indexed and scanned only by trained personnel.

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Only authorized employees must be allowed access to the scanning facility.

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State-of-the-art security measures should be implemented to safeguard medical documents

HIPAA policies for medical document scanning may be changed from time to time but then updates are given to the healthcare centers whenever there are changes. When document scanning is outsourced to a reliable company, there are many benefits healthcare entities get to enjoy. 

Any volume document scanning requirements can be met efficiently

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Enhanced data portability

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Easy and fast data access

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Improved data efficiency

Dependable document scanning companies are highly sensitive to the HIPAA rules and their processes are designed perfectly to ensure confidentiality and foolproof security.