CUC Solutions offers HIPAA regulatory compliance solutions that uphold EDI standards and keep your electronic data safe. The HIPAA privacy rule became effective on April 14, 2003, and its security rule went into effect on April 21, 2005. If your organization is non-compliant, you could incur penalties up to a $250,000 fine and 10 years imprisonment.

To protect the HIPAA privacy rule, storage compliance is necessary. CUC Solutions offers Assureon content addressable storage (CAS) hardware to store and secure your electronic data.

Assureon is the only CAS solution that supports disk, optical, and tape storage devices. It is a plug-and-play storage compliance solution designed to fit the requirements of any business size, so even small healthcare organizations can better achieve HIPAA compliance and protect their patients’ privacy. With Assureon’s content addressable storage system, there is no single point of failure. The hardware is self-diagnostic, self-healing, and assures the safety of all assets under its management.

Assureon encompasses multiple features that aid in storeage compliance when it comes to protecting HIPAA-sensitive electronic data. It includes:

• Data Protection. Single Instance Store creates a unique, encrypted fingerprint for every file based on its particular content so unauthorized users can’t access data.
• Tamper-Free Technology. WORM functionality, which provides Write Once, Read Many capabilities for disk, optical, and tape devices. Only one original document is stored, and its encryption is destroyed when it reaches its mature retention date.
• Data Loss Prevention. CAS technology ensures the integrity of the file and no loss of information through potential data collisions.
• Information Tracking. Audit trail reports meet all the major requirements of HIPAA compliance laws.

HIPAA, the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, demands the reform and standardization of healthcare-related information systems to protect patient confidentiality. The goal of HIPAA is not only to protect privacy, but also to create a single format for electronic data interchange (EDI). While EDI standards exist in the telecommunications industry, new EDI standards must be applied to the healthcare field to ensure HIPAA storage compliance.

The Department of Health and Human Services enforces HIPAA compliance by setting regulations pertaining to:

• Standardization of electronic patient health, administrative and financial data
• Unique health identifiers for individuals, employers, health plans and healthcare providers
• Security measures to protect patient confidentiality

Standardization of electronic data interchange is also a component of HIPAA compliance. Electronic data interchange now plays a more important role than ever in the continuity of business entities that process healthcare-related data. While it was once chiefly used to simplify the exchange of information by converting it from paper to electronic media, electronic data interchange is now a vital component of HIPAA compliance. EDI standards virtually eliminate human interception of patient information in transit, and new electronic data interchange code sets have been created specifically to accommodate HIPAA compliance.

Current EDI standards set forth by the ACS X12 group of standards supported by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) ensure that electronic data is transferred efficiently and uniformly. All electronic data interchange must include standardized syntax and encoding structure that allows for human interpretation; data dictionaries that define specific elements such as name, date, time, and currency; and message formats that combine data elements into uniform segments.

HIPAA rules based on these EDI standards create consistent transaction code sets for the medical field, including:

• Claims and encounters
• Eligibility inquiries and responses
• Claim status inquiries and responses
• Referrals and prior authorizations
• Healthcare payment and remittance advice
• Health claims attachments

CUC Solutions is an expert in integrating software and hardware security and storage solutions into any size business at competitive prices. To achieve storage compliance under the HIPAA provisions, contact CUC Solutions to help you streamline a content addressable storage solution to protect EDI standards and keep your electronic data secure and accessible.

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