The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted under President Bill Clinton in 1996. This law ensures the continuity of healthcare coverage for individuals changing jobs and includes a provision that impacts on the management of heath information; seeks to simplify the administration of health insurance; and aims to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and healthcare.

Key implications of HIPAA include:

• Requires healthcare organizations to completely rethink the manner in which they protect the security and privacy of patients and consumers

• Mandates standard formats for the most common transactions between healthcare organizations

• Many healthcare organizations will need to replace or substantially change their current systems and processes

Sunrise Transcription HIPAA Compliance Sunrise Transcription believes that emerging privacy and security requirements captured by regulations such as HIPAA are an important improvement to the healthcare industry. We believe the changes required are achieved by policy and process controls and technology upgrades. This includes all associates from the United States, India, and the Philippines signing a non-disclosure/confidentiality policy statement.

As a provider of services to the medical industry, Sunrise Transcription has formed an internal HIPAA task force that includes the participation of a cross-section of its internal departments. This task force is charted with ensuring that all new Sunrise Transcription associates must complete HIPAA training on privacy and security. It is also required for all Sunrise Transcription associates to update their training annually. HIPAA security compliance rules are also enforced in the development and installation of all Sunrise Transcription applications. This ensures reasonable maintenance of appropriate administration, technical and physical safeguards for the integrity and confidentiality of all PHI that Sunrise Transcription receives or processes for our customers. Currently, we believe our service offering meets or exceeds HIPAA and The Joint Commission regulations. We seek input from HIPAA consultants to ensure current compliance and to maintain superior confidentiality of patient records.