How to Optimize Your Medical Record Retrieval Process
On account of the multiple restrictions put into place by the HIPAA, it is a difficult process for insurance companies to retrieve medical records nowadays. They have the legal authority to do so as payers, of course, but the procedures and practices must still be in compliance with the present HIPAA standards.
Given that these compliance standards also keep changing frequently, optimizing the whole process can be both complicated and hectic, even for parties who are entitled to legally retrieve medical data, such as insurers, lawyers, hospitals, medical clinics, doctors, and other medical professionals. To help make their job a little easier, we have a few suggestions worth looking over.
Working with a Quick and Comprehensive Workflow Solution is Essential
By definition, a workflow solution would be any local or cloud-based software solution, which has been designed to optimize a specific set of processes in a sector. In the medical field, ems scheduling software along with other available software is an example of a workflow solution that helps both patients and workers know where they are in the medical process – from response times to billing. As we are discussing the process of legally compliant medical records retrieval, the solution should be able to make the whole process of retrieval fast and comprehensive. An excellent example would be the workflow solution offered by companies like americanretrieval.com.
Look for a company that offers:
- Medical record retrieval and HIPAA-Compliant cloud storage for attorneys, insurers, physicians, and other legally authorized personnel.
- Quick retrievals facilitated by the assigned account management professional, and inbuilt tools for constant request tacking.
- The complete set of text-based searching, editing, bookmarking, sharing, annotating, highlighting, and redacting tools and options.
Learn from Past and Present Mistakes
Hospital authorities and law firms need to hold both annual and periodic meetings to discuss:
- Problems that were identified last year and how those problems are being addressed in the present year.
- Current issues that are (or could be) bottlenecking the record retrieval process.
- Possible solutions for past, present, and estimate future problems.
- Effectiveness of the current data scrubbing and formatting system in place.
Identify and Handle Non-HIPAA Compliant Clients and Providers
If by chance one or more of your providers are non-compliant with the current HIPAA regulations, any medical record retrieved and supplied to your company by them is legally unusable. Legal firms, in particular, can and need to work with such providers to make them understand the situation, as well as to help them incorporate the missing policies in their process.
If this proves to be too complicated or a task too difficult for one reason or the other, it is better to leave the provider. Optimizing the process would be practically impossible if your own firm is spending too much time correcting mistakes that the providers should not have made in the first place.
In order to stay legally compliant, it is also important to keep the information you have now gained access to secured from unauthorized access and/or usage. Failing to do so can incur heavy fines or worse. Ensure that any server where the retrieved medical data is being kept meets HIPAA Security Standards.
