Most Physicians Not Ready for HIPAA Compliance: Feds Ease Standards Slightly. (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)

Frieden, Joyce, Clinical Psychiatry News

Harry Reynolds is worried.

Mr. Reynolds is responsible for making sure that his health plan, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, is ready on Oct. 16, the deadline for complying with the part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that regulates electronic health transactions.

That means making sure providers who contract with the plan will be ready to transmit electronic claims that comply with the new law. The health plan has tried everything: provider outreach, educational manuals, you name it. It has even set up a Web site where providers and clearinghouses can test their new claims formats with the plan, free of charge, as often as they like.

The plan receives claims from more than 6,300 providers who transmit through 544 different "portals": vendors, clearinghouses, and the like. As of early August, only 11 of those 544 portals had indicated that they were interested …

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Publication information: Article title: Most Physicians Not Ready for HIPAA Compliance: Feds Ease Standards Slightly. (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Contributors: Frieden, Joyce - Author. Magazine title: Clinical Psychiatry News. Volume: 31. Issue: 9 Publication date: September 2003. Page number: 6+. © 2009 International Medical News Group. COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group.

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