eTranslation Services

eTranslation Services is HIPAA-Compliant

At eTranslation Services, we have thousands of translators and interpreters ready to facilitate your communication needs in more than 100 languages. We continue to help thousands of healthcare organizations enhance their language access programs via our high-quality language translation and interpretation services. We are ready to help healthcare entities anytime they need us. Be one of the healthcare organizations that choose eTranslation Services as their trusted partner for language services.

With the health crisis affecting most of the world today, safety measures must be in place as more patients of different ethnicities, speaking languages other than English, seek medical attention. Now, more than ever, we have to coordinate and collaborate to ensure that critical information is properly disseminated in every language.

Today, it becomes vital for most healthcare facilities to provide language access services to patients with limited English language proficiency as mandated by federal laws. At the same time, ensuring the protection of patient data is of the utmost importance according to HIPAA, not only for the healthcare service providers but their business partners, as well, which include medical translators and interpreters.

What is HIPAA and why we need to comply

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA for short, was passed by the U.S. Congress to ensure that the health information of medical patients is protected in the digital era. Under the HIPAA rules, patients hold the rights to their health information and only they can set the limits on who can have access to it.

The Protected Health Information (PHI) includes all personally identifiable information related to a person’s past, present, or future health status. PHI is information collected, created, maintained, or transmitted by an entity covered by HIPAA relative to the provision of healthcare, use in healthcare operations, or payment of healthcare services. PHI includes all personal information that should not be sold, distributed, or discussed except by the patient and the doctor.

All healthcare facilities and personnel, including their third party business partners such as language services providers, should be HIPAA-compliant under the law.

Protected health information

HIPAA defines protected health information as any information in a patient’s medical record that can be used to identify the person under the law. Aside from personally identifiable information, PHI includes conversations regarding the patient’s treatment between doctors and nurses. Moreover, it includes billing information and other patient information recorded in the health insurance company’s database. The law now covers Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) collected by eHealth applications and mobile health (mHealth). mHealth is the use of wireless and mobile devices such as tablets, desktops, web, wearables, cell phones, text messages, and email to improve health research, health care services, and health outcomes.

PHI includes the following:

  • Billing information from the healthcare provider
  • The email you sent to your doctor’s office about prescription or medication you require
  • Results of blood tests
  • MRI scans
  • Phone records

Entities covered under HIPAA

A covered entity is any person who provides healthcare operations, treatment, and payment, which includes healthcare clearinghouses, health plans, and healthcare providers.

Healthcare providers are defined as clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, pharmacies, doctors, dentists, psychologists, and chiropractors.

HIPAA likewise covers business associates of covered entities. A business associate is a subcontractor or vendor of a covered entity who can access PHI. Some of them are:

  • Lawyers
  • Audit consultants
  • Medical equipment service companies
  • Documentation storage / shredding companies
  • E-prescribing services
  • Medical transcription services
  • Professional translation and interpretation services

eTranslation Services complies with HIPAA regulations

As a business associate of HIPAA-covered entities, it is our responsibility to make sure that our medical translators and medical interpreters are HIPAA-compliant.

We help healthcare organizations improve patient experience and satisfaction, enrich the quality of care for patients with limited English proficiency, and comply with government standards and regulations.

Our expert medical linguists are trained, tested, and certified to provide you with the highest quality language translation and interpretation for your patients.

We uphold the security and confidentiality of patient information. At eTranslation Services, we provide our clients with 100% HIPAA-compliant services. We make sure that our professional translators and interpreters who work with medical organizations sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). We encrypt all transmission of private information, and all relevant files are saved in HIPAA-compliant, password-protected servers that only authorized persons can access.

eTranslation Services prioritizes data security and privacy. We conduct medical interpreting using HIPAA-certified interpreters through secure connections. All our translations, medical or otherwise, are saved and sent using encrypted file sharing.

We assure you that we see to it that only our HIPAA-certified linguists handle your medical translation and interpretation requests. eTranslation Services meet the requirements of the following:

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