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If you've been following our blog, you know by now that providing patients with electronic access to their medical images is cheaper and more efficient than burning and delivering CD copies. Giving patients online access to their images also offers many additional marketing benefits for your practice and easier access for your patients.

There's still a cost for this service, but you can expect it to be less than providing CDs. In either case, more and more providers and hospitals are integrating a HIPAA charge for medical records to help cover the expenses incurred by providing patients with copies of their images.

Sharing medical images in a HIPAA-noncompliant fashion is a violation of patient privacy that can expose you to large fines and potentially criminal liability. But what exactly constitutes a HIPAA violation? In theory, the actions that constitute HIPAA violations are straightforward: sharing what's considered to be private health information (PHI) with someone who's not supposed to receive it.

But from this simple definition, HIPAA violations related to medical images in particular, can take many forms, including exposing a patient's medical images to a vendor who does not have a Business Associates Agreement (BAA), sharing images with a family member or spouse without the patient's written consent, losing a laptop computer or cell phone containing protected medical information, or even mailing a medical image to the wrong address.

This blog will present guidelines for remaining HIPAA compliant, sharing images, protecting patient privacy, and reducing your risk of violating HIPAA rules and regulations.

Second opinions are, in the words of many within the healthcare industry, essential in the case of critical illness and should be the right of every patient. Most insurance plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, cover or even require an in-person second opinion consultation with a specialist prior to treatment. Medicare even pays for a third opinion if the second opinion differs significantly from the first.

For years, medical practices have been distributing patient records back and forth via email. So you may ask yourself, “if it's not broke, why fix it?” Well... it actually is broken. Apart from being an inefficient way to distribute large files, refusing to invest in a secure platform to send and receive sensitive data can cost your practice more than money.

The U.S. spends more per capita and as a percentage of GDP on health care than any other country. However, it ranks 9th among comparable countries, well below the average, in terms of its amenable mortality, or the rate of deaths considered preventable by timely and effective care, and 12th in life expectancy. What factors contribute to these statistics and what is being done about it?