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Newsroom
JCAHO, NCQA ESTABLISH PRIVACY CERTIFICATION FOR
BUSINESS ASSOCIATES PROGRAM; EIGHT ORGANIZATIONS COMMIT TO SURVEYS
Certification will demonstrate compliance with standards to safeguard personal
health-related information; final program standards now available
Washington and Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.-The
Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the
National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) today announced that their new
Privacy Certification Program for Business Associates (PCBA) will officially
launch this month. Eight organizations have now committed to seek
certification.
The new program is designed to assess whether organizations
referred to as business associates under the federal Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 are meeting essential
requirements for safeguarding personally-identifiable health information.
Certain protections for such information are required by sections of the HIPAA
privacy and security regulations. These regulations establish specific
expectations for "covered entities," like health plans and hospitals,
which are in turn required to obtain satisfactory assurances that their
business associates are appropriately protecting private health care
information.
The standards for the new Privacy Certification for
Business Associates address:
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privacy protections for oral, written and electronic health information;
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processes and practices respecting the use, disclosure, and secure storage of
personal health information;
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employee training in protecting personal health information;
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consumer access to their own health information; and
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contracting between covered entities and their business associates.
The program standards are based both on HIPAA and on state-of-the-art
information practices in the health care industry. Any business associate that
handles HIPAA protected information (PHI) for health care providers, health
plans, or health care clearinghouses will be eligible for the program. Such
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.
"The appropriate and timely exchange of personal health
information is essential to ensuring the provision of high quality care-and so
is keeping that information safe," says Margaret O'Kane, president, NCQA.
"Personal health information must be carefully and
effectively protected," says Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., president, JCAHO.
"The Privacy Certification for Business Associates underscores this
fundamental business associate responsibility."
The early participants in the Privacy Certification for
Business Associates program will include four disease management organizations,
two Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS() survey vendors, a
health care information technology firm, and an imaging organization.
The eight organizations are:
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American Healthways, Inc., Nashville, Tenn.
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Center for the Study of Services, Washington, D.C.
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DSS Research, Fort Worth, Texas
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Health Dialog, Inc., Boston, Mass.
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National Imaging Associates, Inc., Rancho Cordova, Calif.
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PersonalPath Systems, Inc., Upper Saddle River, N.J.
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Renaissance Health Care, Inc., Westminster, Colo. Salem Health Solutions, Inc.,
Winston-Salem, N.C.
"We want our members to be assured that their
information will be used properly and that the appropriate safeguards are taken
to ensure that information remains confidential," said Donald Fischer,
M.D., medical director for strategic physician relations at Highmark Blue Cross
Blue Shield in Pittsburgh. "Highmark works collaboratively with our key
business associates in the design and implementation of our integrated
condition (disease) management program and by earning certification, our
business associates will demonstrate that they have the right systems and
protections in place."
The eight organizations will initially use a Web-based tool
to assess their compliance with the program standards. Once the 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
"pass" results will be valid for two years. Actual on-site surveys
are expected to begin in August.
For more information about Privacy Certification for Business
Associates, please call William Tulloch, Director Product Development at
202-955-5145, or Anthony Tirone at 202.783.6655.
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Founded in 1951, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of
Healthcare Organizations seeks to continuously improve the safety and quality
of care provided to the public through the provision of health care
accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in
health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits nearly
17,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including
approximately 9,000 hospitals and home care organizations, and 8,000 other
health care organizations that provide long term care, assisted living,
behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services. The Joint
Commission also accredits health plans, integrated delivery networks, and other
managed care entities. An independent, not-for-profit organization, the Joint
Commission is the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting
body in health care.
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to
improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of
health care organizations and manages the evolution of HEDIS(, the performance
measurement tool used by more than 90 percent of the nation's health plans.
NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web
and the media in order to help consumers, employers and others make more
informed health care choices.
For more information, please contact:
JCAHO - Charlene D. Hill (630-792-5175)
NCQA - Brian Schilling (202-955-5104)
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