[Creecher]

jon.kiparsky, on 31 January 2013 - 08:12 PM, said:

Creecher, on 31 January 2013 - 03:52 PM, said:

CTphpnwb, on 31 January 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

Fax machines? It's the 21st century! Email a pdf.

In some cases that's unacceptable. I know according to the HIPAA laws, information can only be delivered in person or sent via fax. Scanning and emailing PDFs is not allowed.

Where do you get this idea? I used to work in an insurance office, and while I was there I was on the HIPAA compliance team. I looked at a lot of HIPAA documents, and none of what I saw ever specified one modality of transmission over another. Compliance was specified in terms of due diligence, not in terms of procedures: as long as you could document that you'd done everything reasonable to secure any PHI, you were in compliance.

Sending a fax can be a compliant transmission, if you take certain steps but it's not specified as such in the law as far as I could see.

I was told by my health insurance agent that emailing documents was considered insecure, and therefore illegal. But hell, he could've just been lazy for all I know. Hopefully I'll never need to meet with him again.

[h4nnib4l]

Insurance agents are sales people. Sales people can't be bothered with learning things about technology. Taking tech advice from a sales person is like taking diet advice from a Biggest Loser hopeful.

This post has been edited by h4nnib4l: 01 February 2013 - 07:13 AM

[jon.kiparsky]

Creecher, on 01 February 2013 - 08:15 AM, said:

I was told by my health insurance agent that emailing documents was considered insecure, and therefore illegal. But hell, he could've just been lazy for all I know. Hopefully I'll never need to meet with him again.

Yeah, he was talking out his hat. Probably what happened was he got told that there is a HIPAA-compliant procedure for sending PHI by fax (use a cover sheet, use programmed dialing instead of risking a miskey by manual dialing, blah blah) and in his head he turned that into "sending a fax is the HIPAA-compliant way to transmit PHI".

[h4nnib4l]

And I'm sure his computer needs to be wiped every month or two from massive virus infections, so he assumes that computers are unsafe. Sales guys are also the ones who manage to land an impressive number of viruses despite web filtering and antivirus software.

[supersloth]

because sales guys still download porn off kazaa.

[WolfCoder]

It's a pyramid scheme, it's something they're familiar with and can understand.