Oak Enterprises - E-Bulletin/Technology

Are You Hip to HIPAA?

If you can answer “yes” to that without hesitation, Oak Enterprises wants to hear from you! If you’re scratching your head, here’s the skinny…

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law that requires standardization throughout the healthcare field of electronic patient health, administrative and financial data. Unique identifiers must be created for individuals, employers, health plans and healthcare providers. Security standards protecting past, present and future health information must be implemented. In short, the impact of HIPAA is significant.

Not only will every healthcare organization have to comply, but nobody is currently compliant since the final legislative mandates have not been finalized. Once the final standards are adopted, healthcare providers must comply within 24 months while small health plans have 36 months to comply. The level of urgency is being compared to that which surrounded Y2K.

Computer consultants with skills in programming, EDI, system architecture, security, interface design and database administration are among those who will be needed to help organizations large and small such as:

HMO’s & health plans
Healthcare clearinghouses
Large integrated delivery networks
Individual physician offices
Service organizations
Life insurers
Billing agencies
Retirement communities
Nursing homes
Universities

Interested? Give Oak a call.

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