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Acusis Selects Siemens to Evaluate Current HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance Efforts

PITTSBURGH, PA – 16 June 2003 — Acusis®, a leading provider of outsourced medical transcription services, today announced that it has selected Siemens Medical Solutions to evaluate its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy and security efforts and provide an independent assessment of its HIPAA compliance initiative. Additionally, Acusis announced that every one of its more than 500 global staff members has completed and passed a HIPAA awareness, privacy, and security training course.

With a team of more than 350 transcriptionists and editors and its proprietary Web-based software, AcuSuite®, Acusis uses a secure, 256-bit encrypted method to manage the entire transcription process from capturing dictations to delivering electronic reports.

As part of the engagement, Siemens Health Services HIPAA consultants will review Acusis’ policies, procedures, and technical infrastructure to assess vulnerabilities and offer recommendations for compliance with HIPAA privacy and security regulations. The process includes:

• A walkthrough of Acusis’ headquarters to review the physical safeguards.
• A phone sweep of Acusis’ US-based phone lines.
• An onsite vulnerability assessment of the Acusis headquarters’ local area network (LAN).
• A review of written policies and procedures, including confidentiality policy, remote access policy, and employee sanction/disciplinary policy.

" As a HIPAA Business Associate of numerous clinics, physician practices, and hospitals, Acusis has built our model around HIPAA-protected health information guidelines,” David Iwinski, Jr., Acusis President and CEO, said. “We are pleased to be the first outsourced medical transcription provider that has had our HIPAA compliance efforts independently audited by Siemens.”

“Requiring that each one of our staff members complete and pass a HIPAA training course and our relationship with Siemens reinforces our commitment to provide world-class service, quality, and accurate transcription reports that meet or exceed HIPAA regulations,” Iwinski added.

“We’re pleased that Acusis has selected us to review their HIPAA compliance,” Bill Ciemny, senior vice president, Global Services, Siemens Medical Solutions said. “Our review of their current policies and procedures provides them with unbiased recommendations on how they can maintain or improve their HIPAA compliance.”

Siemens has been working for years with Congress, federal, state and local agencies on the development of HIPAA standards, and has been instrumental in setting HIPAA policies.