How Scribe Helps with HIPAA compliance

To be sure, there is no single, one-size-fits-all solution to HIPAA's requirements. The Scribe platform, however, does address many of the physician, practice, and/or institution's Privacy and Security obligations.

Privacy

No more paper just "lying around". Through the use of electronic records, unique User IDs and passwords limit access to patient information to just those staffers for whom it is most necessary. Since, with Scribe, approving records and transmitting files to insurance companies and referring physicians is conducted on a secure electronic platform, records no longer sit on fax machines and check-in desks for hours at a time.

Who's seen a record? HIPAA requires physicians and practices to track every time a record is viewed, faxed, mailed, edited, appended...How will the average practice accomplish this? Forms completed by staff and/or physicians? Use Scribe's automatic electronic tracking and reporting functionality to monitor every peek into the file, every printed page, every fax to an insurance company to provide the confidence you need to sleep at night.

And with HIPAA-mandated role-based access, Scribe provides the ability to dramatically limit who in a practice can even see a record.

Informing patients how their information is protected. "We hope patients don't ask" is not a strategy for dealing with the issue of communicating a practice's privacy program. With Scribe's features and protections, a provider can confidently, proactively share the steps the facility has taken to comply with HIPAA regulations and guard their data from inadvertent and inappropriate disclosure, both inside and outside the practice.

Security

Transmitting word-processed documents via email is a HIPAA violation, plain and simple. As email floats through the internet in can be intercepted. If this is how you receive transcribed reports today, you will either have to stop the practice or gamble on significant fines. Why risk it? Scribe eliminates this exposure and helps the practice be more productive.

Ensuring data is not altered or lost. If your practice ever had to prove a record had not been altered, misplaced, or inadvertently shown to an outsider, how would you do it? Let Scribe's technology do the work for you. Through the power of data warehousing and "versioning" Scribe can show who changed a record, when, what they changed, what the previous version said, including the original dictated record.

Not everyone can afford, or, quite frankly, justify, hiring a data archivist or regularly purchase new computer equipment. Because of the volume of records Scribe processes, it must systematically, routinely, without fail back-up the Scribe data warehouse and ensure those copies are securely stored in multiple locations. For these same reasons, Scribe's redundant systems/hardware ensure damaged disks or crashed hard drives do not spell doom for a provider.

The risk of theft and other ways things "walk out the door." You likely have never visited a technology hosting facility. Two words: Fort Knox. Scribe's computer equipment resides in a secure facility where scanned handprints and photo IDs limit who enters the building. Nothing - no hardware, disks, storage tapes - leaves the facility without the written pre-authorization of Scribe's CEO.

Patient data as secure as your credit card number and banking information. When authorized individuals access patient data on the Scribe platform their computer connection is encrypted - protected from "hackers" - using the same technology American Express, Citibank, Microsoft and Amazon.com use to ensure your personal financial information is completely and totally inaccessible to anyone else in the electronic universe. How does this compare to that stack of files sitting back by the photocopier?

The Future

Scribe's technology team is constantly developing new applications and process to improve the value of the platform and provide new ways to meet HIPAA's requirements. By example, in the very near future Scribe will provide a "Patient Portal" so physicians can provide patients the HIPAA-mandated access to their data and enable them to request - and implement - restrictions to their data.

HIPAA can be overwhelming. Your priority is, and should be, providing quality care for patients. Most providers don't have the time or resources to stay abreast of the changing government requirements and constantly evolving changes in technology hardware and software. Fortunately Scribe is focused solely on technology solutions that meet the needs of providers - both in the practice of medicine and in compliance with regulatory requirements. With Scribe, providers receive a solution that is HIPAA compliant now and will stay compliant as the rules evolve and change.

Improved productivity, streamlined records management and piece of mind; a winning combination.

Finding out if your current patient healthcare information management system is HIPAA compliant can be confusing. Scribe makes it simpler with a HIPAA security and privacy check list that can be used for internal auditing or when selecting a vendor resource.