HIPAA Compliance in Your Office of Finance
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Healthcare providers perform critical services throughout our communities, and their job of caring for and protecting people doesn’t end when a patient leaves the doctor’s office or even finishes their prescription; it extends all the way to ensuring the security of their Protected Health Information (PHI) and Personally Identifiable Information (PII) throughout the financial close process in your organization’s office of finance.
Following the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, healthcare providers and their business associates are tasked with upholding heightened standards of security when it comes to protecting their clients’ PHI. Very quickly, these standards also extend to any third-party systems a healthcare user may use to process this information, and people outside of the immediate sphere of patient care, such as the organization’s office of finance. Consequently, financial professionals working for US healthcare providers, plans and covered entities need a Record to Report solution provider who understands these responsibilities. For this reason, Trintech makes HIPAA compliance a priority as it creates, develops and supports its customers as they use its solutions. We believe it’s an essential part of being a true partner who understands the needs and challenges our customers face in their day-to-day operations.
As a software company that has partnered with many healthcare providers over our long tenure, as well as several other companies in data-sensitive industries, Trintech takes several security measures to ensure that our customers’ data is secured according to industry-leading standards.
With our single-tenant cloud-deployment model and end-to-end encryption along with available public/private key pairs for client-specific encryption, our solutions meet all encryption requirements for data while in transit and at rest. We have also invested in HIPAA-compliance training for our employees, ensuring they understand the importance of and requirements for making sure PHI and PII remain private at all times. As a market leader, we have learned best practices for preventing security breaches.
With capabilities like automatic log off, data backup, user and password management and more¹, your clients’ PHI and PII are safeguarded from all angles. Using a financial automation solution that is not HIPAA-compliant can easily have severe consequences down the line for not only your clients but your business, as well.
Beyond the privacy intrusions you can face, HIPAA violations will be expensive for your business, costing up to $1.5 million per year. On a violation-by-violation basis, fines can range from $100 to $50,000 – a cost which adds up quickly². Beyond the monetary consequences, businesses that violate HIPAA may also have a tough time convincing patients to trust them again with their information. Avoiding these fines and the larger public relations issues that accompany a security breach should be a priority for any healthcare provider.
And at the end of the day, as a healthcare provider or even simply a business associate of a healthcare provider, you should be worried about the health and safety of your patients – not your data. Trintech can help. Learn more about how Trintech’s Record to Report solutions comply with industry-leading security standards while efficiently and effectively automating the financial close process.
- Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
- Source: HIPAA Journal
Written by: Sam King