In advance of its annual meeting in Marietta, Ga., the Medical Banking Project has announced the development of standards meant to ensure health data privacy and security for medical banking constituencies.
The first version of the "Gold Seal Standard" was developed after 15 months of effort by a number of stakeholders in the group, which espouses involvement by banks in facilitating healthcare payments and other transactions.
"The Gold Seal program recognizes that medical banking is a new industry and that the convergence of systems calls for a supplemental review to assure that the uncompromising standards and controls used by banks to secure our money will be used to thwart those who want to inappropriately access our health data," said John Casillas, found of the Medical Banking Project.
The new program adds criteria outlined in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 to existing banking regulations and controls. It's designed to adapt to additional federal, state and commercial privacy frameworks as they evolve.
The rules had their genesis in the group's 2007 meeting, and prompted efforts to isolate banking and healthcare regulations and related accreditation programs, Casillas said. This January, the criteria and an accreditation methodology were adopted, and the rules were given a pilot test.
A post-pilot survey of experts who assessed the effectiveness of the new rules will be presented at the upcoming Medical Banking Institute.
"The pilot was a successful and critical step in an accreditation program that demonstrates the financial service industry's commitment to assuring the highest security and confidentiality of personal health information," said John Phelan, a consultant at Milliman Inc., a global consulting and actuarial firm that includes HIPAA compliance among its specialties.