EHNAC Announces Management Service Organization Accreditation Program for Maryland

Third-party accreditation ensures MSO adherence to industry-established standards for electronic healthcare transactions

FARMINGTON, Conn. – September 14, 2010 – The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body, today announced the launch of its Management Service Organization Accreditation Program (MSOAP). Management Service Organizations (MSOs) offer centralized administrative and hosted technology services, such as electronic health records, to healthcare providers. MSOs ensure that protected health information (PHI) is stored, accessed and/or transmitted in a private and secure manner.

MSOAP accreditation indicates that these centralized data operating centers exceed industry-established standards and comply with HIPAA regulations in areas such as privacy and confidentiality measures, level-of-service and escalation procedures, transaction response times, and systems availability. In addition, MSOAP assesses security infrastructure and data integrity measures including disaster recovery; business continuity; contingency plans; and intrusion detection and response. The program also evaluates transaction processing efficiency; ability to comply with generally-accepted, industry-standard data formats; and audit trail capabilities.

“With health information technology adoption on the rise, accreditation programs such as the one developed for MSOs provides true confidence to healthcare providers in the organizations with whom they are working. MSOAP ensures that these organizations comply with industry-established standards for a wide range of necessary privacy, security, confidentiality, accountability and efficiency in healthcare transactions,” said Lee Barrett, executive director of EHNAC. “State regulatory agencies such as the Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) understand this need and value of such and are embracing MSOAP accreditation as a state requirement. We are actively working with additional states to implement similar programs.”

About EHNAC

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) is a voluntary, self-governing standards development organization (SDO) established to develop standard criteria and accredit organizations that electronically exchange healthcare data. These entities include electronic health networks, payers, financial services firms, health information exchanges and e-prescribing solution providers.

EHNAC was founded in 1993 and is a tax-exempt 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization. Guided by peer evaluation, the EHNAC accreditation process promotes quality service, innovation, cooperation and open competition in healthcare. To learn more, visit www.ehnac.org or contact info@ehnac.org.