Information Technology Services

Thanks to the efforts of many, the HIPAA Security Rule April 20, 2005 compliance deadline was met. In honor of “privacy month” in April, the HIPAA Privacy & Security Office sponsored a contest and received several impressive patient privacy ideas which will be considered for implementation.

A new version of the online HIPAA training is now available through SafetyCAT/Healthstream, making it more convenient for hospitals and clinic users to access online training from a single location. The training is more comprehensive and specific to our institutional policies, helping to decrease the number of violations.

The HIPAA Privacy Office participated in a state-wide pre-emption task force established to determine policy for release of protected health information to law enforcement, under the direction of the Utah Hospitals and Health Systems Association.

A Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Committee was formed in cooperation with the Emergency Preparedness department to address critical business needs. Thus far, the Committee has completed a criticality analysis for IT responses to a disaster.

Electronic claims that University Health Care sends to insurance companies were modified to conform with the new set of HIPAA standards for bills. The new standards require that cleaner and more complete data be sent so the claims can be paid more accurately and timely. Insurance companies have also modified their electronic remittance files to comply with the new HIPAA standards for payments and we have in turn modified our system to read and process these new files. Although not mandated by HIPAA, a new database and web interface were implemented to help track the electronic claims and payments.