The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) outlined changes in the provision of healthcare and the management of paper and electronic records. Such changes focused primarily on defining standards in a) medical information transport, b) medical transaction set formats for transmitting or handling electronic claims, remittance, and eligibility information, and
c) overall protection and confidentiality of patient-identifiable information. Perfecture intends to be fully compliant with each of HIPAA's requirements.

Here is a breakdown of the current HIPAA requirements and our actions to accommodate each:

A) In line with HIPAA's first goal to promote industry-wide use of electronic transactions and transmission of information, the Act provides a strong disincentive to those using paper claims management. After October 16, 2003, covered entities, including health plans, clearinghouses, and any providers who submit information electronically, will be prohibited from submitting paper claims to Medicare. Instead, submission of electronic, HIPAA-compliant, Medicare claims will be a precondition to payment. HIPAA will also require that such electronic transmission be secure.

   To this end, Perfecture attempts to send all submitted claims electronically. Perfecture only sends claims on paper to payers that currently do not accept electronic submission. Perfecture's internet transactions are secured by Secure HTTP (HTTPS) using 128-bit encryption, the highest level of encryption, from the browser to the database and back.

B) Perfecture has taken significant measures to ensure that our transaction set formats, a second major HIPAA regulation, will be compliant as well. All claims data is transmitted to the payers in the specific 837 ANSI data formats required by HIPAA.

C) Finally, in addition to proper information transmission and data formatting, HIPAA also enforces the overall protection and confidentiality of patient information. Security is crucial for practitioners, and patients want to know that their medical data will stay private.

   Perfecture understands these concerns and uses the latest Web technologies to ensure security. Perfecture's firewall architecture prevents unauthorized access to the network and back-end databases. Additionally, the Perfecture system tracks user login/logout times; an internal audit group conducts regular audits of system usage. All Perfecture employees must sign a Non-disclosure/ Confidentiality Agreement, and all facility ID/pass cards, system user ID's and email addresses are shut down immediately upon an employee leaving the company.

   Perfecture also has a disaster recovery plan in place to safeguard all systems. We have redundant servers safeguarding all information with daily data and weekly email backups.

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