Pressure for HIPAA compliance is rising and practices are deploying necessary technologies to avoid security breaches. Penalty for HIPAA breaches has been revised and while the fine for one-time security violation stays under $50k, repeat violations in the same year can lead to a fine of $1.5 million.
Are HIPAA penalties applicable to your practice?
Fines are applicable across all HIPAA violation categories and a wide range of healthcare vendors and their subcontractors also come under the same. Due to this, even if you think you haven’t violated HIPAA, you might still get penalized.
If your practice is dealing with patient date or the healthcare industry, there is no way you can escape the probability of breaches. Small practices will have to be extra careful when it comes to implementing HIPAA-5010 because running a business in an age of e-prescriptions, e-mails and EHRs can be quite risky.
Is your practice HIPAA complaint?
You will have to be extremely proactive in ensuring that security breaches don’t take place through e-mail communication, medical identity theft or portable device theft. It will not just lead to huge penalties but also sabotage your reputation in the industry.
Providers will not just have to conduct a HIPAA security risk analysis to determine what corrective actions need to be taken but also spend time and money on getting educated about HIPAA security and training the in-house staff to handle the stringent security measures. Operating systems will have to be updated and data transmission outside office will have to be sent in an encrypted form.
How can a medical billing company help?
With healthcare reforms increasing pressure on providers, very little time is left to concentrate on training and other requirements for HIPAA compliance. Practices require a comprehensive set of measures to avoid patient data breach. Established security policies need to be reviewed and risk assessment needs to be performed. Since time constraint, lack of budget and trained staff makes these tasks daunting; seeking external help becomes an effective option.
A medical billing company will offer a robust RCM process for your practice, eliminating the need to re-train staff and re-test software for HIPAA compliance. Since a dedicated team of experts will ensure successful implementation of HIPAA-5010 standards for coding and billing, cash flow of your practice will remain unaffected.
Medical billing companies perform billing services while keeping patient and practice information confidential. Trained staff makes use of the latest technology for offering quick responses, AR follow-ups, insurance authorization, EMR solutions along with several other secured services.
Medicalbillersandcoders.com has been offering HIPAA compliant medical billing services to small as well as large practices across 50 states in the US. From avoiding litigations in accordance to HIPAA Act norms to strengthening the revenue cycle through streamlined billing and coding, the team at MBC is well-trained in balancing operational and clinical functions for medical practices. Our main aim is to handle the complexities of HIPAA and other compliance for you so that you get ample time to focus on quality patient care.
