HIPAA and your practice…. – On-Site Acoustic Testing

As you probably already know, T\the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was enacted by the United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers.

What does this mean for your practice?

Whether you are a medical doctor, dentist, mental health professional, or other health care provider it means that you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your patient’s records.

You’ve probably already paid close attention to your record keeping, billing, and client contact protocol, but have you given thought to maintaining the privacy of your clients while they are in your office?

Many office suites were designed and built prior to the implementation of the HIPAA Act and even offices constructed long after the start of the HIPAA Act may not have been constructed in a way that ensures the privacy of your patients.

Sound transmission between examination rooms is a common issue in many offices. It’s simply unacceptable for one patient to be able to overhear the private conversation between you and your staff with another patient.

We can provide testing to determine the Sound Transmission Class (STC) and the Speech Intelligibility Index (STI) of the examination rooms, private offices, and other areas of your facility to determine whether unwanted sound transmission between spaces is present.

Should testing disclose a problem, or if you’re already aware that your office has a problem, we can assist you in determining the correct materials that will be necessary to fix the problem.