The Outsourcing of Private Medical Information Offshore
The estimated $20 billion medical transcription industry[1] turns a doctor’s audio notes into an electronic record. These notes could contain diagnosis, x-ray analysis or a myriad of information essential for communication between healthcare providers[2]. It could also contain sensitive information such as whether a patient has cancer, a sexually transmitted disease, or some other information that the patient would like to keep private.
Transcription can be a costly, timely process; so much so that a great deal of this work is outsourced outside of the hospital to be processed. Of the work that is outsourced, an estimated 10%-20% of that is sent offshore according to the
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This process can take between two to four days depending on the backlog. Aside from the obvious expense and demands on the doctor's time, transcription traditionally inserts real delays into the patient care process. Time is often of the essence in medical care.
Cue the outsourcing opportunity. Outsourcing the process speeds up the results. The physician phones a toll-free number, anytime, to record his or her transcription. Doctors can do this at home, since they don't have to deposit the recording at the hospital. If the service provider has an offshore office, say, in India, it's morning. Staff members retrieve the recording and type the transcript. On-site staff physicians review the transcription, so the American doctor doesn't need to review the record for accuracy, saving him or her valuable time that could be spent with patients. The service provider emails the transcript to the hospital's server. Voila! The outsourcer completed the process overnight.[4]
Some incidents with regards to patient records being used for extortion by offshore companies have arisen. Heartland Information Services, a medical transcription service based in Toledo, Ohio, was the victim of one such instance when employees from the company’s Bangalore, India office “threatened to release confidential patient information to the public if certain demands weren’t met in a specified time frame.”[5] Heartland
In the health care business, there are certain standards and laws that have been put in place to protect our patients and their personal health information. When a health care facility fails to protect their patient’s confidential information, the US Government may get involved and facilities may be forced to pay huge sums of money in fines, and risk damaging their reputation.
In this case, CAC technology also provides a connection between EHR documentation and transcription systems. Primarily, CAC technology in a healthcare environment has rapidly and drastically changed the process in which medical coding in health-information management. This is handled for a better productivity and efficient workflow solution, including production monitoring, coding review, management reporting, computerization of coding and auditing. Clinical documentation is ensuring that it has routinely generated medical codes from computer assisted codes (CAC). In addition, CAC technology has enabled healthcare organizations to recognize the revenue-cycle process as they increase their requirements towards improved quality. The complete implementation of the CAC technology is essential when improving the main necessities towards patients, such as the efficiency, quality, productivity, and management of their care. Last but not least, CAC technology has produced one of the best strategies for the challenges that the HIM professionals face as coding becomes one of the most important aspects of transitioning to
This procedure takes several days or months to complete, and require several interactions to complete the transaction. The interaction begins with the patient´s visit to the office visit nad the physician with their staff will create a medical record.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was intricately designed to provide not only a more efficient health care system but also as a protection for private patient information and data. With the widespread use of technology and computers in hospitals, the availability of patient information, their health portfolio, and their previous care has greatly improved the efficiency of health care. However, this also means that there is greater leeway for that information to be lost and/or shared without patients consent.
Providing quality transcription services to customers are key. In the healthcare industry, proper documentation is vital as the records are considered legal documents. These documents
This affects the delivery of healthcare in that the information needed by providers, physicians, medical staff, and the patients themselves, may not be delivered correctly, timely, and of course securely. Various systems will be discussed and each how they affect healthcare delivery, in particular Electronic Health Record (EHR), Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) (also sometimes referred to as Computerized Provider Order Entry).
Medical treatments require a great deal of paperwork. Before patients are allowed to go through treatments, a clinic must process their insurances, medical records, and surgery details. As a result, a lot of private information is gathered within the hospitals. With so much private information, it is essential for healthcare facilities to efficiently organize their paperwork. An unorganized recording system can prove disastrous to a hospital. Leaving patients’ paperwork publicly unattended and misplacing a file are both considered negligent. Misplacing patients’ information can potentially lead to information theft and invasion of privacy. An efficient way of storing information can be valuable in preventing HIPAA
Accuracy of recordings and ease of understanding of patient information in medical records play central role in quality of
Accuracy of recordings and ease of understanding of patient information in medical records play central role in quality of
According to Rosenbaum et al. (2015), healthcare documentation combined with clinical communication that is coded for hospitalized patients is an important part of medical care. The paper or electronic healthcare record is then submitted to third party payers that provide reimbursement for services based on the guidelines of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG), and inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) (Rosenbaum et al., 2015). The
Typically non-value added activities account for 95% of the lead time and only 5% of the activities are actually adding value to the process. This can be easily seen on the above listed process flows for patients, technologists and the transcription report.
The department of Health and Human Services protects and guides the health and well being of individuals here in America (Thacker, 2014). They fulfill these duties providing Americans with adequate and efficient health and human services and monitoring services designed to increase the efficiency of care in the health system (Thacker, 2014). One of the services being monitored by the department of Health and Human Services is the electronic health record system, which carries private and vital information of patient’s health record enabling all eligible participating health workers access to these records (Thacker, 2014). A breach of the protective health information of patients in a health organization creates chaos as these are against the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law (Thacker, 2014). Hence, measure will have to be put in place to determine what caused the breach and how to rectify it to ensure the breach never happens again (Thacker, 2014).
In a world full of electronics it would only seem logical to have health records electronic. Not only are medical records efficient, reliable, and quick to access, new technology allow patients to access their own personal medical records with a simple to use login and password. “People are asking whether any kind of electronic records can be made safe. If one is looking for a 100% privacy guarantee, the answer is no”(Thede, 2010). At my hospital, upon every admission we ask the patient for a password for friends and family to have to have if they would like an update on the patient 's condition. We do not let visitors come up and see the patient without the patient 's consent. In doing these things, we help to ensure the safety and protection of the patient 's health information and privacy.
Voice recognition has eliminated the time between patients that could prohibit the doctor or nurse from remembering each detail of the patient’s chart (O’Brien & Marakas, n.d.). The pros and cons are prevalent in any technology, but the doctors that have tried this technology have seen a huge difference in the way the health care providers are able to care for each patient. Speech recognition technology could change the medical field forever if more physicians are willing to jump on board and give it a
In light of available security measures and their widespread acceptance within the information security community, there is no excuse for healthcare organizations to fail in fulfilling their duty to protect personal patient information. Guaranteeing the confidentiality and privacy of data in healthcare information is crucial in safeguarding the data of patients as there should be a legal responsibility to protect medical records from unauthorized access.