Over time, along with the advancements in the healthcare industry and medical billing sectors, we are experiencing major threats towards patient data security in the medical insurance billing process. It is a fact that despite all the efforts put forth by the US government, the HIPAA entities and other allied organizations, patient data breach is increasing day by day. And that too, with all the technological advancements the healthcare industry has achieved so far in recent years. In fact, patient data leaks have crossed several hundred in numbers, thereby affecting and costing millions of individuals nationwide.

Recent analyses have uncovered that the most common of data breaches occur with the following patient data.

1. Demographic information of the patient
2. Patient clinical data
3. Billing related information of the patient, which can include the patient’s credit and other financial information.

How such breaches occur with medical insurance billing

Patient data breaches are quite high in the United States medical insurance billing industry which involves medical insurance billing and coding companies and healthcare providers, ranging from small scale physicians, to large healthcare facilities. Considering how dominant the healthcare industry is, it need not be said how much impact is created with patient data leaks. Most of the breaches that happened in the US occurred due to phishing, insider dealing, ignorance on the agents’ part, poor patient data security control, and other technological glitches.

How to make your medical insurance billing secure

There are certain measures that you can implement in your medical insurance billing system in order to make your patient information safe and secure. You can start off by implementing a “portable media policy” that bans the usage of portable storage devices inside the work environment. It has been proved that banning portable storage devices in the work environment has reduced patient data breach to a considerable extent.

You can also start keeping multiple back-ups of your patient data files. This will help in preventing loss of patient information. You should ensure that these back-up files are kept in different locations so as to avoid data loss due to any unforeseen event.

Restricting unauthorized internet access can also help you improve the security of your patient data in the medical insurance billing process. Proper care should also be taken while sharing corporate information on social networking websites.

Above all, you can implement a “system security plan” in your medical insurance billing process that will help control data leaks and losses.