Warning: The Treating Physician’s HIPPA Policy Can Derail Your Workers’ Compensation Claim Management Efforts
The Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (“Privacy Rule”) establishes a set of national standards for the protection of certain health information. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued the Privacy Rule to implement the requirement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). The Privacy Rule standards address the use and disclosure of individuals’ health information (called “protected health information”) by organizations subject to the Privacy Rule (called “covered entities”), as well as standards for individuals' privacy rights to understand and control how their health information is used. Within HHS, the Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has responsibility for implementing and enforcing the Privacy Rule with respect to voluntary compliance activities and civil money penalties.
A major goal of the Privacy Rule is to assure that individuals’ health information is properly protected while allowing the flow of health information needed to provide and promote high quality health care and to protect the public's health and well being. The Privacy Rule strikes a balance that permits important uses of information, while protecting the privacy of people who seek care and healing. Given that the health care marketplace is diverse, the Rule is designed to be flexible and comprehensive to cover the variety of uses and disclosures that need to be addressed.
Healthcare providers vary as to their privacy procedures in order to comply with HIPPA. These regulations require covered entities to establish privacy policies but provide no standard guidelines. As a result, there can be as many different privacy policies as there are doctors, hospitals and health plans. There is no guarantee of uniformity. Therefore, employers must increasingly make an effort to understand the privacy standards the health care provider will use in treating their injured employees and make a determination as to whether their privacy standards pose insurmountable problems. In fact, this evaluation may lead to the employer limiting or avoiding the use of their medical services.
CompEraser comes with on-line, on-demand resources needed to evaluate the treating physician’s HIPPA policy and its potential impact on claim management strategy. These resources also include injury prevention, OSHA compliance, safety training, prompt injury response, workers compensation disability management, plus more. These resources are available 24/7 and used irrespective of which workers compensation carrier you select. Its patent-pending technology also provides unique financial reports for monitoring the effectiveness of your safety and health program on an on-going basis. For more information visit our website at www.CompEraser.com.
