GE Medical Systems Information Technologies

HIPAA Readiness Statement

Almost no other industry changes as fast as the healthcare industry. This is truer than ever with the upcoming HIPAA regulations. As a Centricity™ Physician Office - Practice Management (PM) user, you can be assured that at GE Medical Systems, we are fully involved in the HIPAA process. As new regulations come out, GE Medical Systems will be ready and so will you.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is rapidly and significantly changing the way we process electronic healthcare information. “Security” and “privacy” have become the new industry buzzwords, and the chase is on to conform to the new standards. After reviewing tens of thousands of comments on its proposed rules, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently published final rules to establish national formats and data set standards for electronic transactions, standards to ensure the security of electronic health data, and policies to protect the confidentiality of medical information.

GE Medical Systems has completed development of claims and remittance formats using the current ANSI (American National Standards Institute) ASC (Accredited Standards Committee) X12 standards. Eligibility and eligibility response files are mapped to the ANSI ASC X12 format as well. This functionality is available with our latest version, Centricity Physician Office - PM 2003.

GE Medical Systems will continue to closely follow the development of the HIPAA requirements for security, privacy, and electronic attachments. We are assessing our practice management software, Centricity Physician Office - PM , against the proposed security rule to evaluate necessary changes and to assure that we are in compliance. We are prepared to quickly implement any required changes as the final rules are published. It is GE Medical System's policy to maintain compliance with relevant HIPAA regulations as they are issued and become effective and to incorporate them into future product releases. GE Medical Systems makes available all product releases to customers who have current annual update agreements.

See also:
HIPAA-What Does It Mean To You?

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