Wiki BILLING STATEMENTS

[slr01bellsouth]

Hello all, can you please tell me if we can email billing statements to our patients without their permission or will that be an HIPPA Compliance issue?

 

[csperoni]

Pet peeve of mine - it's HIPAA, not HIPPA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
I do not see this being a potential HIPAA violation, unless the patient has already notified you that they do not want PHI sent via e-mail. A provider may disclose PHI as is necessary to obtain payment for services. It would certainly be good practice to have encrypted e-mail for a provider's office.
I personally would also suggest that if you are going to do this for patients in general, to include something in your new patient paperwork that the patient agrees to e-mail.

 

[thomas7331]

I agree, good advice above. If you take proper steps to secure the information, you will probably be OK. I would recommend that 1) you include this in your notice of privacy practices so that the patient is properly notified and is able to opt out if they choose to; and 2) you take steps to ensure that the email is encrypted and secure; and 3) you minimize the amount of PHI that is included on the statements.

 

[sls314]

If you have the option of a patient portal, I would consider emailing the patient a notification that they have an updated statement on the patient portal.

That's what my personal physician does - as a patient, I think I prefer that to them sending my statement as an attachment to the email.

I get an email stating that I have a new statement, then I log in to view it.