HIPAA Compliant Appointment Reminders
What is HIPAA Compliance?
HIPAA is the acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that was passed by Congress in 1996. HIPAA does the following:
- Provides the ability to transfer and continue health insurance coverage for millions of American workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs;
- Reduces health care fraud and abuse;
- Mandates industry-wide standards for health care information on electronic billing and other processes; and
- Requires the protection and confidential handling of protected health information
Do I Need HIPAA Compliant Appointment Reminders?
If your business maintains any type of health information for your patients, you are required to be HIPAA Compliant. Some of the types of businesses that require HIPAA compliance are
- Physicians
- Surgeons
- Dentists
- Podiatrists
- Optometrists
- Hospitals
- Clinics
Basically if you store any type of medical information for your patients, you probably need HIPAA compliance. Our appointment reminder service for doctors and medical staff provides HIPAA compliance at no extra charge when you sign up for a Premium Account.
This Forbes article talks in detail about what business need HIPAA compliance.
Our Commitment to HIPAA Compliance
We specialize in HIPAA Compliant Appointment Reminders for patients. Data security and privacy are at the forefront of technology, especially where medical records and information are concerned.
We take extra steps to ensure that any data you share with us is secure, private, and confidential.
- Follow the HIPAA guidelines of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
- NEVER share your company data or your patients data
- Only store the minimal data required to send your HIPAA compliant appointment reminders
- Encrypt your data when in transit and at rest
- Delete your data when no longer needed
- Follow all additional HIPAA guidelines
- Sign a BAA(Business Associate Agreement) with you. Our BAA can be downloaded here. We can typically sign yours as well if you have your own BAA that you prefer to use.
We are happy to provide your company with our security and HIPAA certifications upon request.
HIPAA Compliant Data Storage
Our HIPAA Compliant data centers are housed in the United States. All transmissions to and from our data centers use high level encryption to keep your data safe in transit.
- Our database and web servers are stored securely in the USA with our HIPAA Compliant data partner HIPAA Vault
- HIPAA Vault maintains data centers in multiple geographic locations within the United States including San Diego, CA and Phoenix, AZ.
We only require the minimum amount of data necessary to send your HIPAA compliant appointment reminders.
We will work with you to build your patient appointment reminders in a way that provides maximum HIPAA compliance. This is done by only sending the minimum information to your patients about their appointments and never sending specifics about the appointment or any kind of diagnosis information.
If and when you cancel your appointmentreminders.com account, we will completely erase all of your company and patient data.
Secure Encrypted Connections
- Any time you connect to our website to view patient reminder data, you are connecting through a secure, encrypted connection. This is also true with our integration service and web API.
- Our data is transmitted through the most current version of TLS Encryption and never sent using plain, open text.
- For more advanced setups we can provide you with an SFTP to upload files
We Take Care of Your Patients
Reminding your patients to come to your office is easier than ever through our service. Most patients these days even EXPECT you to send them an appointment reminder.
In addition, some of your patients may need diagnostic services to prevent a greater health scare down the road. And while patients have to be responsible for their own health to a certain extent, health practitioners should make every effort to encourage compliance with their medical recommendations. In addition to appointment reminders, we can also send out screening reminders, annual physical reminders, and more!
With our patient appointment reminders, you can even send different reminders for different types of appointments. For example, you may want to let your new patients know that they need to arrive early to fill out appropriate paperwork, or maybe you want to let your patients know that they need to fast prior to a lab appointment. You can also include links to download forms and paperwork as well.
Our service will read the appointment type that you send us from your EMR (Electronic Medical Record), and send out the appropriate automated patient reminder. Our service is WAY MORE FLEXIBLE and customizable than built-in Reminders from your EMR.
Once we configure your account and set up automation, there is very little that you will need to do!
Patient Reminders Help Your Office
The use of HIPAA compliant medical reminders benefits your office staff as well. Your employees can spend more time taking care of your patients when they show up, instead of tying up the phone lines with reminder calls. Your patients will appreciate it when your receptionist is not rushing them through the check-in process.
A lot of appointments are made far in advance. A friendly reminder can encourage your patients to show up even when they don’t remember making the appointment because it was done months ago. Our appointment reminder service for doctors and medical staff allows you to send out reminders as far in advance as you wish. As well, we give you the ability to easily send multiple reminders for an appointment and roll failed patient text reminders to automated call reminders at no extra charge.
Most medical professionals who use our services experience a huge reduction in no-shows. In fact, a HIPAA compliant reminder system is usually worth it financially even if you only prevent ONE no-show. Of course, another real benefit is that you won’t have to spend all day at work waiting for patients who don’t show up.
At AppointmentReminders.com we are very focused on Data Privacy and Security. We take it very seriously! Know who you are dealing with before you share your customer’s data!
