The Significance of HIPAA Training
Anyone who has visited a doctor’s office or hospital over the last few years will know all about HIPAA. It stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and has been put in place to guarantee all individuals that their medical records will be kept strictly in confidence by those who are handling them. This applies to doctors, hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.
When a medical professional hires staff of any kind they must ensure that that individual has received HIPAA training and will be capable of maintaining HIPAA compliance while working in the office. This also means that should a medical office need to hire an answering service they will want to be sure that all of the operators are going to have had HIPAA training as well.
Why would a telephone operator need this background? Such an individual would be dealing with a great deal of information during the performance of their job. They will often receive very private and confidential information from the caller, they may have to deliver very specific advice from the on call doctor and it is only HIPAA training that will let the operator know exactly how to handle this situation without any HIPAA violations.
Of course if a telephone answering service is utilized it is not only the live operators who should understand and follow required regulations. The company itself must be able to properly and legally retain records, have an emergency or disaster “backup” system in place to ensure the stability and security of records. This means they will have equipment and systems in place that protect all data in a physical and electronic fashion. Usually this translates to password protected accounts, secure messaging and processing, digital storage, and multiple levels of storage with backup to an offsite server or data collection system.
Some of the better medical answering service providers are also making a triage nurse available to their clients as well. Generally these are licensed agencies that are formatted in the same fashion as the medical call center, with banks of specially trained nurses prepared to answer questions and give highly qualified advice or medical guidance. Such agencies will also have to be fully in line with HIPAA training and regulations, and before selecting a medical answering service be sure that their staff as well as the nursing provider are all up to date with their training.
About the Author:
MedConnectUSA is a leading provider of medical answering services and telemessaging services. MedConnectUSA has been serving the health care industry since 1991. MedConnectUSA handles routine and emergency calls for the medical industry only and all calls are answered by HIPAA trained, US operators.