Special E-Mail Bulletin #2
December 2002
List of HIPAA-compliant practice management software
Special E-Mail Bulletin
Hello, everyone.
Here's a story from this morning's AMNews regarding a website that publishes a list of HIPAA-compliant practice management software systems. The URL to the site is at the end of the story.
Gil Weber
Web site lists HIPAA-compliant software
While a vendor's absence from the directory doesn't mean it's not compliant, organizers say it should motivate you to check out your computer company.
By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Dec. 23/30, 2002. Additional information
More than 50 companies selling physician practice management software are using a Web site sponsored by several medical societies to let doctors know if their systems will meet new federal standards for electronic health care transactions.
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, physicians, insurers, providers and claims clearinghouses must use standardized national formats for claims and several other claims-related transactions by Oct. 16, 2003, assuming they submitted an application to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services for a one-year extension. Otherwise, they had to comply with the regulation as of Oct. 16.
With the extended deadline only 10 months away, physicians should determine whether billing and practice management software systems they are using will support the HIPAA electronic transaction standards, especially the claim transaction, said David Kibbe, MD, director of health information technology at the American Academy of Family Physicians.
To help doctors meet the transaction standards, privacy rules and other HIPAA regulations, the AAFP, the Medical Group Management Assn., the American College of Physicians--American Society of Internal Medicine and other societies last October launched a site to educate and inform doctors about HIPAA.
The site includes an online directory that physician practice management software companies can use to let doctors know whom they can contact at the company with their HIPAA questions, the name of the vendor's software product, the version and what HIPAA transactions that product supports now.
One reason the societies created the online directory is that there are about 2,000 companies selling practice management software, and some industry observers estimate that up to 30% of those companies may go out of business because they can't afford to upgrade their systems to meet HIPAA requirements, Dr. Kibbe said.
About 2,000 companies sell practice management software.
Doctors shouldn't panic if their vendor isn't in the directory. Medical societies are just beginning to let vendors as well as their members know about it, he said.
"If their vendor is not on the list, what we're doing is instructing physicians, if you will, to call their vendor and ask them to be on it. It's perfectly possible that a vendor may not have heard about the list yet," Dr. Kibbe said.
But if the vendor ignores doctors' requests or can't offer the standardized information that the online directory database requests of them, "then that is an early warning sign that you may need to find another vendor," Dr. Kibbe said. Or if doctors are not using the version of the software product that supports a HIPAA-compliant claim transaction, "the assumption you can make is that you're not going to get paid in October, because the version you have won't be sending [HIPAA-compliant] claims."
The listings are free to the vendors, and doctors should not construe the listings as an endorsement of any particular vendor's software by the medical societies, Dr. Kibbe said.
"This is entirely caveat emptor ," he said. "This information is being put up by the vendors themselves, and therefore it is assumed that the information ... is accurate. But we're not as a group evaluating that information for its veracity."
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
HIPAA.org's practice management system directory (http://www.hipaa.org/pmsdirectory/)
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