Industry

HIPAA Compliance

The HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules are meant to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation's healthcare by encouraging secure widespread use of electronic data interchange within the U.S. healthcare system. One of the fundamental drivers behind the creation of HIPAA was the need for many different organizations and people to share a single patient's information – from physician offices, hospitals and clinics, to retail pharmacies, billers, payors and claims clearinghouses.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires entities to take reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of communications with individuals. Currently, a large portion of patient records, billing, documents and transactions amongst different caregivers are delivered and exchanged using fax systems. This poses challenges as fax communications are traditionally not confidential, given they can be viewed by any person near the fax machine (at the sending or receiving end), or thereafter if the faxes are not properly stored. Most healthcare providers have enough faxing volume and activity to merit improvements in how they send, receive, log and store faxes.

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Concord Fax Online

Concord Fax Online supports all healthcare providers in their HIPAA initiatives. Personal patient information is transmitted to and from involved parties securely. Providers can send and receive faxes from their computers or mobile devices as easily as email while relying on state of the art encryption. Additionally, Concord Fax Online customers can log, store, and manage their faxing using the security and confidentiality of their existing IT infrastructure. As a result, providers benefit by using their existing IT systems to become HIPAA compliant while eliminating the non-compliant HIPAA communications such as conventional faxing.

Concord Network Security and HIPAA

Organizations with HIPAA compliant email systems gain significant advantages with Concord Internet Fax Services. They are able to communicate more efficiently and securely, while doing so in a cost-effective manner. A fully HIPAA-compliant Internet Fax solution requires deploying a Virtual Private Network or utilizing Transport Layer Security. Either of these methods leverage the low costs of the internet infrastructure while ensuring that emails containing in-bound or out-bound are encrypted and secure. Additional services such as Concord Web Services utilize SSL (Secure Socket Layer), and are encrypted by default.

 

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