Medical billing services perform a crucial job for healthcare providers. However, they need access to patient information not only for claim generation but also for other reasons. The patient data helps an organization in providing uninterrupted care to them. The providers themselves even share patient data before recommending a treatment. Thus, patient data must be secured enough to avoid data piracy issues. HIPAA Compliance is an act asking every medical billing service in USA to safeguard the patient’s health data.

Before any delay, let’s overview what HIPAA is. And how medical billing services can be HIPAA compliant? What are the key elements to navigating HIPAA compliance in a practice’s revenue collection cycle?

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

HIPAA or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a legislation of 1996. It considers the patient’s health information sensitive. Therefore, the American Congress has implemented a national standard to protect patient information. This federal law bound the healthcare representatives. They are forbidden to open up health information to anyone without the patient’s consent except their medical billing services.

Since the legislation has passed, every practice and medical billing service must have to obey it. Otherwise, any negligence in complying with the HIPAA standard can affect them adversely. They may face financial penalties, any legal action, or any sort of criminal charges as a consequence of this negligence. Collectively, all these actions can significantly impact their reputation and health billing services duties a lot. Medical billing audits must be performed more frequently. By this, you can point out the loopholes in your medical billing services. And make the required steps to fix the HIPAA compliance issues.

What is Patient Health Information (PHI)?

Every information that your medical billing services require to identify the patients comes under the PHI definition. Generally, we take a patient’s name, date of birth, medical records, and insurance-related information. However, a patient’s credential details, family backgrounds, etc. all are a part of PHI.

Why do Patient Data Breaches Occur?

Do you know? Humans are responsible for almost 31% of errors in healthcare data breaches. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report has made such a claim and current data support this finding. So, it’s an old belief that information breaches could only be the following:

• Equipment thefts
• Hacking
• Malware or ransomware attacks
• Physical office break-ins

It’s human error that contributes the most to healthcare data leakage. The major problems that medical billing service encounter in their payment collection process are:

• Wrong email address in a forwarded email.
• Addresses on mail delivery envelopes don’t match what’s inside.

Anyhow, today we have several technology-driven tactics and solutions. They streamline medical billing services by assisting in different operations. However, it is you who has to check out whether it satisfies HIPAA regulations to the fullest. Automating the medical billing processes is no doubt a good idea. Alongside this, one must check out the following considerations while implementing an automated payment solution. All these considerations collectively support HIPAA compliance to avoid any difficulty in the future.

Safe Manual Data Entry

Usually, medical billing services access, move, or process data in printed or email forms. Every time they do so a point of vulnerability establishes i.e., hackers might take the leverage to get control. So, healthcare IT has successfully established new automated payment systems. Thus, this long episode of possible security lapses has ended now. Thus, there is no need to handle and discard paper forms to process patient bills. They have been replaced with an automated payment option.

With the help of these automated solutions, patients can enter their payment information directly. These solutions reduce the risk of errors in manual uploading and save staff time. Also, they lessen the possibility that patient information will be left dumped around a healthcare practice while it waits to be entered.

Payment information can be viewed as an identifying characteristic; thus, it must be managed appropriately. Loss or abuse of patient data can result in fines of up to $50,000 per occurrence. Fortunately, by automating the payment process, digital payment systems reduce some of the burden associated with preserving patient information.

Guarantee Patient Statement Compliance

When a practice utilizes a HIPAA compliance approach in its medical billing services, it automatically applies to its patient statements as well. The patient statements are medical bills that they send to patients via SMS texting, emailing, etc. They contain every information regarding the revenue to be processed. However, it may include additional information if patients inquire about extra details.

Some systems offer additional protections for patient data. Thus, in such cases, medical billing services employ QR codes or links in patient statements. These links require patients to log in first securely to obtain their payment information conveniently. Thereby, data protection and patient satisfaction can both be achieved by selecting a payment solution that guarantees safe sign-in and access to extra information about the treatment and cost breakdown.

Accounting Right Statement Distribution

Generating the right payment statement is an effective step. Meanwhile, the distribution of statements to the right patient is another task. Automated payment collection process in medical billing services saves from this hassle. They utilize modern techniques that use software-generated texts, emails, and statements. The payment collection software itself sends and attaches the emails to the right address.

Conclusion

There are various factors for making the payment collection process of medical billing services HIPAA Compliant. However, nothing can go above selecting an automated system for medical billing-related operations. Once you successfully implement HIPAA in your practice, you can secure your reputation. Therefore, try to find a modern payment solution to help you with patient data protection. However, you must be wise in selecting any of them for your medical billing services.