HIPAA Regulatory Alert
JCAHO, NCQA certifying privacy compliance
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), Oakbrook Terrace, IL, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), in Washington, DC, have started a new Privacy Certification Program for Business Associates to assess whether organizations designated as business associates under HIPAA are meeting essential requirements for safeguarding personally identifiable health information.
The groups say standards for the certification program address privacy presentations for oral, written, and electronic health information; processes and practices respecting the use, disclosure, and secure storage of personal health information; employee training in protecting personal health information; consumer access to personal health information; and contracting between covered entities and their business associates.
Program standards are based both on HIPAA and on state-of-the-art industry information practices, the two groups say. Any business associate that handles HIPAA-protected information for health care providers, health plans, or health care clearinghouses will be eligible for the program. Eligible entities include software firms; health care IT firms; data collection, analysis, and processing firms; practice management firms; third-party administrators; disease management organizations; and survey vendors, among others.
Initial applicants for the certification were American Healthways Inc., Nashville, TN; Center for the Study of Services, Washington, DC; DSS Research, Fort Worth, TX; Health Dialog Inc., Boston; National Imaging Associates, Rancho Cordova, CA; PersonalPath Systems Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ; Renaissance Health Care Inc., Westminster, CO; and Salem Health Solutions Inc., Winston-Salem, NC. They initially will use a web-based tool to assess their compliance with the program standards. Once requested materials have been submitted, a survey team will conduct an on-site review of the organization. Each review will yield a pass/fail decision, and approved organizations will be certified for two years.
[For more information, contact JCAHOs Charlene Hill at (630) 792-5175 or NCQAs Brian Schilling at (202) 955-5104.]
