The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is among the most important compliances that any healthcare BPO company must follow. To say that HIPPA-compliance is a necessity for a Healthcare contact center to be relevant in the industry is an understatement. This compliance helps you to protect your patients’ PHI (Protected Health Information) and prevent any data leaks. As a healthcare services provider, you must only outsource your customer support functions to a HIPPA-compliant contact center.
However, not all healthcare BPO companies operating in the United States have HIPPA-compliant processes. As a result, engaging with such contact centers can put your patients’ personal and medical data at risk. Hence, it is absolutely critical to verify that the healthcare contact center you partner with is HIPPA-compliant.
The Importance Of HIPPA-Compliant Healthcare Contact Center
Healthcare BPO Services need to access real-time patient data for seamless operations. This enables the healthcare BPO company to offer current and accurate information to patients and your healthcare business. However, the absence of HIPPA-compliant practices means a potential lack of adequate security measures to safeguard patient information. This could result in security leaks of messages that include PHI and compromise your healthcare business operations. In addition, this will also cause you to lose credibility as a healthcare services provider. At the same time, a number of fines would be levied against your business as financial consequences for the data breaches.
Therefore, the Healthcare contact center you employ as your customer support partner must have HIPPA-compliant practices across their operations. This includes:
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Data Transmission Channels
All data acquisition and dispersion must happen through encrypted channels. The data transfer methods between your healthcare facilities and the contact center must have multiple encryptions for maximum protection. In addition, the contact center must acquire data only from reliable and reputed external sources. This will help to prevent data leakages during data transmission.
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Data Storage Areas
The contact center may store data on physical drives or cloud-based storage units. However, it is absolutely critical that they encrypt the data before storage. Their patient data-protection measures must be of equal intensity as your healthcare business, if not more. Ensure that every area of the healthcare BPO Services that has access to patient data has adequate encryption.
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Data Communication
The primary job of medical call centers is to assist patients with their queries and grievances. As a result, they have to acquire and share medical information with patients. Once done, they provide the relevant data to your healthcare business. Therefore, the healthcare contact center must have adequate verification protocols before sharing any information. At the same time, they mustn’t ask for irrelevant and sensitive information from customers.
These practices will enable the healthcare call center to protect your patients’ PHI at every step of their journey. In addition, you will be able to protect your credibility as a healthcare services provider with secure data management practices.
HIPPA-compliance is also critical for a number of healthcare services. For example, if your healthcare services include or utilize Coronavirus contact tracing practices, HIPPA-compliance is a must. With the Coronavirus spreading rampantly around the globe, contact tracing services is among the best options to restrict the spread. However, the subject is quite sensitive, and COVID-affected people are not open to sharing information with contact tracers. However, a HIPPA-compliant contact center would sufficiently ease the process. Patients may be more open to discussing their health and answering other Coronavirus contact tracing questions with HIPPA-compliant contact tracers.
Therefore, regardless of the kind of healthcare services you offer, you must only engage with a HIPPA-compliant Healthcare contact center. This will make your operations seamless while also providing complete security for your patient’s medical and personal information.
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