The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) holds extreme importance in the world of medical transcription. This act has set guidelines to ensure the security and confidentiality of people’s health data. Medical transcription companies take measures to conform to these guidelines. The task, however, becomes difficult when one works from home. The home-based medical transcriptionist is expected to take measures on his/her own.

If you are thinking of working from home, here are some of things you should do in order to conform to HIPAA.

Make sure your computer is not used by anyone else. Your computer should be dedicated to your medical transcription work. It is important that you don’t use it even for your own personal work.

It is important that the medical information that passes through your hands is not accessible by anyone else. Make it a point of locking all work-related papers in cabinets. Don’t let family and friends access your home-office.

Protect your work on the computer with passwords. Keep the anti-virus software and the firewall always updated. You cannot afford to let a malicious program compromise the medical information in your hands.

You should use a secure FTP connection to transfer medical transcription files. Also, keep the firewall on when you are on a network. You should make a habit of encrypting work-related e-mails.

It is important to back up your work regularly. Make multiple copies of your backed-up work and keep them at different locations (apart from your office). This ensures business continuity.

Given that people can work from just anywhere as medical transcriptionists, what is it that unifies their work in terms of standards? Well, there is something called the Medical Transcription Style Guide as issued by the Association of Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI). While this guide establishes conformity to certain standards for the creation of medical records, there needs to be something else to ensure that medical transcriptionist follow certain guidelines while making these records. This is where the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) comes in. Among other things, this act sets standards to ensure the privacy of health data. Let’s look at what it expects of the medical transcriptionist.

HIPAA expects that the access of the health data should be limited to the medical transcriptionist. It expects you to ensure utmost security of data. It also expects you to ensure continuity of your work in case of a problem.

Now, how can you conform to the HIPAA guidelines? Here are some tips:

• Make sure your computer is not used by anyone else.
• Do not use the computer for personal work.
• If you work from home, make sure your working space cannot be accessed by other people including your family.
• Protect your work with passwords.
• Keep the anti-virus software and the firewall updated.
• Keep the firewall on when you are on a network.
• Use a secure FTP connection to transfer medical transcription files.
• Encrypt work-related e-mails.
• Back up your work regularly.
• Make multiple copies of your backed-up work and keep them at different locations (apart from your office).

Is there anything else you do to conform to HIPAA? Do share your tips with our readers.

Among the expectations in terms of deadlines and quality goals, a  medical transcriptionist has to deal with confidentiality expectations too. A  transcriptionist has to ensure that all the medical information that passes through his/her hands is never compromised. This is where the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) comes into the picture. Now HIPAA not only expects you to deliver accurate records but also wants you to work under certain specifications, and rightly so. HIPAA’s expectations revolve around ensuring that the patients’ health information is always kept confidential.

In a medical transcription company, employees can comply with HIPAA easily as the company implements measures to keep patient data secure and confidential. A home-based transcriptionist, however, has to take measures on his/her own in order to ensure compliance with HIPAA. Here’s what you need to do:

• Use a firewall and an anti-virus software. Make sure these are updated on a regular basis. Try to keep a computer dedicated to medical transcription work so that no one else has access to the system.
• Use passwords to secure all the medical transcription data on your computer.
• Use a secure FTP network to send medical transcription files.
• Use a password to access your FTP site.
• While sending e-mails about your medical transcription work, make sure they are encrypted.
• Keep backing up your work on a separate drive for the purpose of business continuity.

So, how do you ensure security and confidentiality of medical information? Do you do anything different from what has been stated in this post?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), among other things, sets standards to ensure the privacy of health data. Since the medical transcriptionist is an important part in the creation and maintenance of healthcare documents, he/she has to adhere to the guidelines suggested by HIPAA.

HIPAA not only expects you to deliver accurate records but also wants you to work under certain specifications. HIPAA’s expectations revolve around ensuring that the patients’ health information is always kept confidential. What can you do to ensure compliance with HIPAA? Let’s find out. 

The access of the health data should be limited to you.

• Make sure your computer is not used by anyone else.
• Do not use the computer for personal work.
• If you work from home, make sure your working space cannot be accessed by other people including your family.
• Protect your work with passwords.

Ensure utmost security of data.

• Keep the anti-virus software and the firewall updated.
• Keep the firewall on when you are on a network.
• Use a secure FTP connection to transfer medical transcription files.
• Encrypt work-related e-mails.

Ensure continuity of your work in case of a problem.

• Back up your work regularly.
• Make multiple copies of your backed-up work and keep them at different locations (apart from your office).

If you work from an office, you don’t have to worry about conforming to HIPAA standards as the medical transcription company will be equipped to handle that. However, if you work from home, you have to take all the measures possible to ensure that you are HIPAA-compliant.