- A release of information — ROI — involves the releasing of a patient’s medical records to another party. Due to the HIPAA Privacy Rule, an ROI must always be authorized by the patient.
- There are several reasons for a release of information, including for continuity of care, for billing purposes, for health studies, and for legal proceedings.
- The release of information process consists of five main phases.
- ChartRequest enables healthcare providers to streamline their ROI workflows while remaining in compliance with HIPAA and HITECH laws
What Is a Release of Information?
A release of information is an official statement by a patient. It authorizes a healthcare provider to give a patient access to their protected health information — PHI. It can also authorize the healthcare provider to allow a third party access to some or all of the patient’s PHI.
The data needed for an ROI varies depending on the patient’s specific situation and the provider. For this reason, most healthcare organizations rely on release of information forms rather than individually-written letters.
There are strict federal regulations known as HIPAA laws that protect patients’ privacy. That’s why an ROI request form must almost always be signed by the patient to be legal.
What Is the Purpose of Release of Information?
There can be several purposes for a release of information, including:
- To ensure continuity of high-quality healthcare
- To provide healthcare providers with sufficient data for medical billing
- To provide health insurance companies with information for billing
- To help life insurance companies determine premiums
- To provide research institutions with data for health studies
- To provide attorneys with relevant data for legal proceedings
What Is the Release of Information Process?
- Recording, tracking, and verifying the request
- Retrieving a patient’s PHI
- Safeguarding sensitive information
- Releasing the medical data specified in the authorization for release of information
- Completing the request and invoicing it
You can find a more in-depth description of the release of medical records process here. During the ROI process, release of information departments have to comply with both HIPAA regulations and the HITECH Act. They must meet nine strict criteria to ensure every request is handled with the utmost care and confidentiality.
Streamline Your Release of Information Workflows With ChartRequest
Because the process of releasing medical data is so complex, many healthcare organizations rely on top-quality providers like ChartRequest — the industry standard for secure health information exchange.
Our comprehensive HIPAA-compliant enterprise solution leverages cutting-edge software and cloud infrastructure to streamline your ROI process workflows. This makes them faster and more efficient while at the same time reducing overhead costs. And perhaps more importantly, it greatly reduces the burden on your HIM staff leaving them to do what they do best: provide excellent service for your patients.
See how the ChartRequest app works:
Our referral management system offers many benefits:
Benefits of the ChartRequest Release of Information Platform
The ChartRequest ROI platform offers healthcare organizations several distinct benefits:
- Mitigate risk of breach of HIPAA and HITECH laws: Protect patients’ PHI with the latest security safeguards
- Implementation of a fully automated ROI workflow: Transform manual processes of the past into automated tasks.
- Reduced overhead costs: Minimize spend on the ROI process due to outsourcing or automation and accelerated task performance.
- Increased operational efficiency: ROI workflows are standardized, fast, and repeatable.
- Faster delivery of medical records: Requestors enjoy shorter wait times for their documents.
- Free status update communications: View the status of a request at a single glance in your ChartRequest dashboard.
- Immediate billing: Requestors receive automatically-generated invoices before receipt of medical records.
- Expedited, accurate reimbursement: Eliminate billing errors and long lag times with automated pricing and billing.
- Simple setup: Avoid burdening your IT department. Our secure software doesn’t require any complicated integrations.
- Transparency and trustworthiness: Ensure trackability of all ROI requests with our fully HIPAA-compliant platform with detailed audit trail.
Features of Our Secure Release of Medical Records App
As a leader in electronic health information exchange software, the ChartRequest app includes the following features:
- HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001-ready: Our top-of-the-line platform is always current with the latest privacy and security regulations. Plus, it’s cloud-based for maximum efficiency.
- Easy-to-use task automation: Refer to our clear instructions to automate your workflows in just a few simple steps.
- Detailed, real time audit log: Gain an itemized audit trail of all touchpoints for each ROI request at your fingertips
- ROI dashboard: Our user-friendly ROI dashboard is easy to navigate and provides clear oversight.
- Real-time metrics and statistics: Gain actionable insights into your organization’s performance regarding handling ROI requests with metrics on turnaround times, frequent requesters, etc.
- Integrated billing and reimbursement: Automatically generate accurate, itemized invoices, and receive reimbursement before the release of the medical records.
- Automated status updates for requestors: Save time and resources on keeping requestors informed about their requests.
- EMR-agnostic platform: Implement our secure platform regardless of what EMR system your organization uses.
- Role-based access control: Determine who in your organization has access to medical records according to their roles in the ROI process.
- 256-bit SSL encryption, 2048-bit private keys, and AES multi-layered encryption for patient records: Our state-of-the-art technology is equipped with the latest security measures to drive compliance throughout the ROI process.
- Double QA verification for every medical records request: Our platform requires every request to be verified twice by quality assurance for an added layer of security and privacy.
- Dedicated landing page: Get a customized landing page to specifically handle your organization’s ROI requests.
- And more!
With ChartRequest acting as the custodian of medical records on your behalf, you can rest assured each release of information request is handled quickly, efficiently and securely.
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