Health information management continues to evolve, from the technology used to the compliance issues surrounding it. Offsite archiving also becomes affected by these changes. It’s all about protecting the data and keeping confidential information safe from compromise.
Provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) modify HIPAA, which has affected the way facilities operate their health information management processes. HIPAA also faces continued modifications due to the HITECH Act, which means healthcare facilities, including those that utilize offsite archiving, face more severe penalties as their liability expands. This might come as alarming news to those six out of 10 healthcare organizations that said in a recent survey that they have not accurately determined where their information is being stored.
Depending on which vendor you’re using, the data you store offsite is not too difficult to forget about because you don’t have to manage it and all the administrative duties are left up to the vendor. If you don’t know where it is, how do you know it’s safe? This is a question facilities will have to be able to answer as regulations require data to be as secure as any data healthcare facilities have onsite. Every record must be accounted for and sufficiently protected or penalties will ensue, whether it’s a legal liability or a loss of trust.
The ARRA instituted more provisions that provide civil monetary penalties regarding privacy issues. This has caused many health information management plans to install administrative and technical safeguards that protect health information records. This includes offsite archiving, and appropriately so – about 45 percent of all breaches occur at the third-party level. The new rules dictate that offsite archiving vendors are held reliable as “covered entities.”
As more and more data is stored away at data centers, the data that healthcare professionals rely on for 24/7 availability will continue to be important, regardless of whether it’s stored on-site or offsite. Medical images, from simple X-rays to complex MRI images, are used to help doctors and specialists make diagnoses and prescribe recovery methods. More and more medical facilities are storing their images off-site, mostly in the cloud where they can gain access to them at a moment’s notice.
This availability doesn’t have to come with risk. Vendors with the latest technology are able to provide the unfettered access while ensuring that the images are accessed only by those authorized to view them. While compliance issues will continue to stack up, the best vendors will stay on top of them and be nothing short of a hi-tech vault where valuable images come in and nothing gets out without approval.
The professionals at OffSite Image Management, llc. know that without being fully compliant with regulatory issues, they would be of little use to healthcare facilities. Protecting clients’ data and providing a disaster recovery backup plan is just one of the services provided by OffSite. Keeping the data available and safe is what has made OffSite a leader with rural radiology and critical care facilities.