HIPAA, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, and particularly the Administrative Simplification Provision apply to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers who transmit health information in electronic form. This legislation's intent is to reduce the administrative costs of providing and paying for health care by requiring standards be adopted for electronic transactions. Aiming to reduce fraud and improve efficiency, HIPAA is believed to save close to $30 billion during the first 10 years of implementation. The Workshop on Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) believes that savings could exceed $70 billion each year. The official website for HIPAA compliance is http://www.cms.hhs.gov/hipaa.

HIPAA rules ensure:

		Standardization of electronic data pertaining to patient health, administrative, and financial information
		Creation of unique health identifiers for individuals, employers, health plans, and health care providers
		Creation of security standards to protect the confidentiality and integrity of "individually identifiable health information," past, present or future.

HIPAA rules call for severe civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance, including:

		fines up to $25,000 for multiple violations of the same standard in a calendar year
		fines up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment up to 10 years for knowing misuse of individually identifiable health information

To learn more about HIPAA, use the following resources:

- HIPAA EDI Implementation guides
- HIPAA.org
- Privacy Rules
- Security Rules

Overall, HIPAA is resulting in sweeping changes across the healthcare industry in the U.S.

NextServices and HIPAA

Our services are structured to ensure HIPAA compliance. Our offices have appropriate physical and data security measures to protect client information. All electronic transactions are conducted over a high security 128 bit encryption technology. Our software provider’s HIPAA policy is available here.

We use Our specific data privacy policies include of Internet / Intranet Policy, Desktop Security Policy, Record Retention Policy, Information Disposal Policy, Confidentiality of Protected Health Information PHI), Internal referencing, E-mail Policy, Password Security Policy, Virus Security Policy, Fax Security Policy, Printing Policy and Physical access policy. We build a “security culture” using constant education and awareness. To learn more, read about our security policy.