Intermedia, announced that compliance templates for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are now available as part of its email encryption service. Healthcare firms can not only outsource their Exchange email to Intermedia, but can also use the company’s email encryption capabilities and HIPAA templates to set and enforce policies for regulatory compliant email communication.
HIPAA requires healthcare firms to safeguard patient information, including the transmission of that information over email. Using Intermedia’s HIPAA templates, healthcare firms are able to select from a pre-built list of rules to determine whether emails contain protected health information (PHI) and need to be encrypted. PHI is defined as any personal health information that can be linked to a specific individual and includes any part of the patient’s medical record or payment history. Encryption is added automatically in appropriate cases to assure emails are secure and read only by the sender and recipient.
“Healthcare firms deal with sensitive information and have strict regulatory requirements to safeguard that information,” says Jonathan McCormick, Intermedia’s chief operating officer. “The challenge is that managing email and HIPAA compliance in-house creates serious cost and complexity implications. With Intermedia’s integrated offerings, healthcare firms can outsource their email and configure it to help assure HIPAA compliance. This saves on costs and better protects patient data.”
The templates include a set of pre-determined compliancy code sets, keywords, and policies built from the most current industry information, including:
American Medical Association’s Current Procedural Terminology, CPT® codes, and their descriptions
International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the most common form of communicating a disease or condition – both 9th and 10th Clinical Modifications are included (ICD 9/10 CM)
The Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS), a common form of communicating ancillary services and supplies that are billed to third party insurers
National Provider Identifier (NPI) a unique 10-digit code number that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issue to registered healthcare providers in the US and is used by payers such as insurance companies to issue payment to the provider
National Drug Codes (NDC), the common codes for medications that are prescribed or ordered; the FDA and CMS mandate the format for NDC codes
Claims Adjustment Reason Codes and Remark Codes (CARC/RARC) and their descriptions – the most common standards used by health insurers to describe a payment made for a service line that has been submitted on a claim
Inpatient Fee for Service Codes (FFS) used to designate an inpatient fees incurred by a patient
Social Security Numbers, the de facto form of national identification and historically used often in healthcare related activities for ID purposes
Keywords indicating a likely inclusion of some Protected Health Information (PHI)
The templates are automatically updated on a quarterly basis to incorporate any changes made.
Encrypted Email, along with the HIPAA templates, is available for resale by Intermedia’s Private Label Partners.
For more information on Intermedia’s Encrypted Email, as well as its suite of hosted communications and collaboration software, including Exchange 2010, hosted PBX, Office Communications Server 2007, SharePoint 2010, and an entire ecosystem of related offerings including support for BlackBerry, iPhone, Android phones, fax lines and more, please call 1-800-379-7729.
