Patient Signature Capture For HIPAA Compliance
Posted by Art Misita on Tue, Mar 02, 2010
One of the new FAQs of our business relates to a method of capturing patient signatures for the CMS-1500 form boxes 12 and 13.
Most practitioners are content to have a signed CMS-1500 form in their patient's chart folder, but in anticipation of the implementation of electronic medical records storage in the database and the eventual requirement to be able to transmit that signature that you normally claim to be "on file", an increasing number of our customers have expressed an interest in acquiring a signature scanner that they can use to capture the patient's signature in the office and then to be able to transmit it as part of an insurance claim or in response to a request for proof by a regulatory agency.
So we have done some research and have identified the SigLite 1X5 Digital Signature Capture device from Topaz Systems, Inc. (http://www.topazsystems.com/), available with a USB interface and selling for approximately $100.00 from various sources on the web. It comes complete with a soft stylus/pen and a replaceable overlay, includes all necessary drivers and interfaces with Microsoft Word so you can easily save the scanned signature in The Practice Resource patient document library. We also found many other signature capture scanners that sell for three to four times the price, but this model seems to be quite affordable and more than adequate for the typical therapy office - our primary customer base.
As technology marches on, so does the expectation level of regulatory agencies. Here is one item that will very likely be on the office requirements short list very soon