Healthcare services in modern times are quite demanding. Inefficient patient health portals cannot bear the administrative burden and handle extensive patient data. As a result, they might leave a bad impression of your medical practice and lead to patient dissatisfaction.
Therefore, it becomes essential for healthcare establishments to choose an appropriate patient health portal so there is no compromise in patient care. Modern healthcare facilities depend highly on third-party health portals like OmniMD to have a centralized database, improve operational efficiency, and create long-term goodwill for their business.
Being in the service for the last 20 years and having served 600+ healthcare facilities, OmniMD provides holistic services in line with modern healthcare demands.
Choosing an appropriate patient health portal can improve the operations of your healthcare unit and let you serve your patients better, giving them minimum hassle. However, data privacy and security are the most concerning questions regarding patient health portals.
In this article, we explore the factors related to data privacy in health portals and how they can affect the credibility of your healthcare service.
Factors Affecting Data Privacy & Security in Patient Health Portals
Let us look at some typical data privacy and security concerns with third-party health portals.
1. Safety of Confidential Data
Health portals store sensitive data related to the patient’s medical history and identity documents. If such data is leaked, fraudsters can use it for identity theft. Moreover, people with severe conditions can face discrimination in their workspace or among their family and friends.
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), all healthcare organizations are bound by the US legislature to safeguard such data. Failing to do so can land your medical practice under legal scrutiny.
2. Maintaining Data Integrity
The data related to a patient's medical history is extremely sensitive. Medical establishments depend on this data to decide on the course of treatment.
Any unauthorized tampering or leakage of this data can prove catastrophic. It can lead to negligent medical care and even ruin your medical practice. Doctors cannot refer to tampered data to confirm the patient's medical history.
3. Criminal Activities
Medical data is one of the most sought-after resources for cybercriminals. It can be used in multiple ways for financial gain, phishing, and even extortion.
One of the most common frauds related to medical data leakage is making false insurance claims. Someone can easily use a person's stolen medical data to file fake insurance claims, which leads to substantial financial losses to insurance companies.
These cybercriminals can lock healthcare organizations out of their databases and demand ransom. Hence, a health portal must use the latest and most secure encryptions and firewalls to protect patient data.
How OmniMD Secures Sensitive Patient Data?
OmniMD is a New York-based med-tech provider specializing in advanced healthcare services. They specialize in providing services like all-in-one Electronic Health Record (EHR), Practice management (PM), and Revenue cycle management (RCM) solutions for medical practices.
Let us look at the security protocols OmniMD uses for across-the-board data protection.
Personal Information is secured from outside parties: OmniMD might need personal data to contact visitors, send brochures, or process billing requests. Under no circumstances does OmniMD compromise this patient data to third-party sources.
Data Encryptions: The collected patient data is stored in a secure cloud environment protected through stringent access control and regular audits. Additionally, it is encrypted using the industry standard 128-bit Secure Socket Layer SSL encryptions.
HIPAA Compliance: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the standard for the privacy of sensitive patient data across medical establishments. OmniMD, combined with cutting-edge security features like advanced encryption, access control, and frequent audits, adhered to HIPAA regulations.
Other key highlights of the OmniMD online health portal are:
Quick appointment set-ups with automated reminders.
Records insurance information
Fast digital payments
OmniMD provides 24/7 customer support from expert staff for round-the-clock and smooth user assistance.
A Paperless process leads to faster processing of requests.
Test reports and updates
Complete one-stop record of patient medical history
Patient self-help articles
4 Million+ patient records
The Bottom Line
Online health portals have increasingly become crucial to the modern healthcare sector. Choosing an appropriate provider can lead to a faster billing process and reduced denial rates, maximizing your profits. However, despite the numerous advantages, healthcare organizations must not forget the importance of data privacy and security on such portals.
OmniMD has been one of the industry's most sought-after medical billing software services. It outperforms its competitors with cutting-edge billing software solutions and ensures that the patient health portal data is always secure.