Medical transcription: The importance of HIPAA and HITECH

In modern life, healthcare services continue to play a big role in ensuring the quality of life. Such vital services as healthcare are subject to many statutory laws to ensure quality and security of services. The root of protecting patient information arises from the sacrosanct patient-healthcare professional relationship. A patient-healthcare professional relationship is central to the practice of medicine and is essential for delivery of high-quality healthcare. The quality of patient-healthcare professional relationship is important to both parties. The better the relationship in terms of mutual respect, knowledge, trust, shared values and perspective about diseases & life, the better the amount of information, enhancing accuracy of diagnosis and quality of care.

In fact the confidentiality of the information regarding the patient as provided to the healthcare professional/healthcare facility is one of the components of the foundation for the medical code of ethics

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was established to protect confidential patient information. More recently HITECH has come into force and has expanded the concerns of HIPAA and enhanced the powers of HIPAA to enforce measures and standards for protection of confidential patient information.

Maintaining HIPAA and HITECH compliance is not only mandated by law but is essential to the reputation and the financial health of the healthcare facility. Any breach in this area could lead to

• Loss of patients:
• Increasing costs towards damage control
• Increase in malpractice litigation
• Loss of revenue

Considering the negative impact that HIPAA and HITECH breaches can have on the healthcare facilities bottom-line and reputation, it is important that every aspect of healthcare facility operations is protected from any breach.

Medical transcription is one of the aspects that need to be protected, as it is the process of creating patient medical records from the dictation of the patient – healthcare professional encounter. As the transcription process requires focused resources to produce optimum results, it benefits from being outsourced to a professional medical transcription company.  However while outsourcing medical transcription one of the main concerns of healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals is whether the medical transcription company is HIPAA and HITECH compliant.

The process of evaluation should not only include factors like cost per line of transcription, accurate transcription, turnaround time and software & tools used for transcription but also all the aspects of security.

All the aspects of security during the medical transcription process would include the evaluating the measures taken for security including:

• Technology
• People and processes
• Infrastructure

TransDyne a leader in the outsourced medical transcription industry has always understood the importance of securing and protecting confidential patient health information during the process of medical transcription. Measures have been taken to ensure that PHI is protected at all levels. The measures taken by TransDyne to be HIPAA and HITECH compliant include:

Securing people and processes:  People and processes are secured by implementing the following:

1. No sub-contractors: Work outsourced to TransDyne is executed in-house and no subcontractors are used.
2. Educating the team: The transcription team, i.e. medical transcriptionists, proof readers, language editors and the quality assurance team have been educated on the importance of protecting and securing PHI
3. Inbuilt security routines: All applications and processes have inbuilt security measures like password changes, access audits and related exercises.
4. Joint access: Most confidential databases can only be accessed by a combination of passwords of a minimum of two individuals.
5. Restricted Internet and Email access: Unlimited access to Internet can lead to security breaches. Access is limited to a few limited sites.
6. Legal Declarations: Declarations are signed by employees undertaking to maintain the security of data.
7. Security audits: Frequent audits are carried out to ensure that all procedures are followed and are effective
8. Disabling ports for removable media: Ports for using removable media have been disabled to eliminate misuse of PHI

Securing Infrastructure:  Infrastructure is secured by the following means:

1. Company owned and managed facilities
2. Manned security
3. Video surveillance 

Securing Technology: Technology has been secured by use of security features like

1. All medical transcription related software applications are built in-house. 
2. Database based systems.
3. 128-bit data encryption
4. Multi-tiered application architecture
5. Design level security safeguards
6. Firewall protected networks
7. Sterilized e-mail servers
8. Denial of access procedures and
9. Multi-modal alerts

TransDyne offers quality medical transcription at reasonable prices, executed by experienced and qualified medical transcriptionists with a very quick turnaround time executed through secure HIPAA and HITECH compliant channels, with very high levels of accuracy and all this with technology that is advanced but easy to use!              

To avail complete medical transcription services from TransDyne, click here.