Doing it Right and Why That’s Important In 1996, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to: “amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage in the group and individual markets… and for other purposes.” In […]
Business Associate Agreements – Don’t do business without them.
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created the HIPAA Privacy Rule on December 20, 2000. The version governing HIPAA Privacy Rules today, called the Final Omnibus Rule, was adopted on March 26th, 2013. By law, the HIPAA Privacy Rule applies only to covered entities, such as […]
The Criticality of Clarity in Essential Communications
For the purposes of this paper, we define “Essential Communications” as the transmission of highly regulated transactional information, such as statements, bills, proprietary information [i.e. Non-Public Personal Information (NPI) or Protected Health Information (PHI)], and legally required notices. The overall message to providers of essential communications is that offering your clients, patients, or customers their […]
Case Study: Expert Witness / Title Theft
Recently, someone called to see if we could help identify the origin of a letter critical in a legal matter. It was a case of potential title theft of this person’s home, a matter that had been in and out of court for over a decade. The case rested on whether or not this person […]
Compliance and Risk Management as a Case for Outsourcing High-Security Mail Fulfillment
Introduction: Many small to medium businesses (SMBs) produce their high-security Protected Health Information (PHI) or Non-Public Private Information (NPI) mailings in-house. Perhaps it’s a lack of communication service providers (CSPs) willing to accept smaller mailing contracts. Or, maybe it’s the misperception that it’s less expensive or more secure to do it in-house. We’ve shown […]
Financial Justification for Outsourcing High-Security Mail Fulfillment
Introduction: Many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), required to produce high-security Protected Health Information (PHI) or Non-Public Private Information (NPI) mailings end up doing it themselves, in-house. This may be because there’s a lack of communication service providers (CSPs) with the resources to do high-security mailings, willing to accept smaller mailing contracts. Or it may […]
