Financial Services Current State In Healthcare

By Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI)

Financial service organizations are increasingly providing products and services to the healthcare community. While the medical lockbox may have been the first healthcare-specific product that banks1 offered to larger hospital systems, products have expanded to include a number of different services for payers, providers and consumers. Over the past decade healthcare financial services have expanded to include much more than converting images of explanation ofbenefits (EOB) to data files.

When first enacted, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's (HIPAA) impact on financial service organizations was uncertain and generally considered not applicable. On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) which includes the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, a law that supports the development of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that will support the use andexchange of health information for patient care. The HITECH Act amends existing and provides new HIPAA standards to strengthen security and privacy protections.