Health Care Organizations: HIPAA Compliant File Transfer

Healthcare organizations (be they pharmaceutical companies, healthcare clearinghouses, claims administrators, etc) exist in a high-pressure, highly-regulated (think HIPAA) environment, and if you want to stay competitive you need to be able to quickly, effectively adopt new technologies. Regulations like HIPAA require healthcare organizations to keep personally identifiable health information confidential and to track and report on who, when and where the information is accessed. Conversely, the systems used must be not only secure, but simple enough that all staff that need to access the information in the course of their duties can do so easily and effectively. Email, though simple and widely-used, suffers from a lack of security and an ability to transfer only small files (10MB or less). FTP, though commonly used by IT professionals, is very complicated to use and also very insecure.

Managed File Transfer and HIPAA

Let’s look at an example: a local hospital has a wide variety of staff, clients and partners, not all of whom are on-site. Doctors and nurses need to be able to access and update patient information on the fly, while hospital administrators need to manage the access given to the hospital’s billing service, who is then in contact with various insurance companies. They had previously used email and FTP – but their FTP system lacked encryption abilities (which meant they were not compliant with regulations like HIPAA) and email was becoming less scalable and an increasing drain on server resources. On top of this, neither system allowed them to manage workflow or enforce appropriate access to pertinent records. The solution? FilesDIRECT’s “One-Click Send” system is easy to use; with a simple, customizable public upload page, allowing hospital staff and partners to use the system without time-consuming or expensive training. Our online file transfers use the same encryption as banks and major online retailers (like Amazon). This means healthcare organizations can rest assured their patient information is secure. Simplicity, security, and built-in tracking means FilesDRECT is the perfect solution for HIPAA compliant file transfer - try it FREE today!