Standards Organization Urges Coordination on E-Signatures.

A health information board of the American National Standards Institute said it is working to coordinate the development and maintenance of electronic signature and other security standards for the health-care and insurance industries.

"In the past, several national standards-development organizations have developed their own security and signature standards," said C. Peter Waegemann, chief executive officer of the Medical Records Institute and chairman of the institute's health-care informatics standards board. "It is time that these independent efforts be coordinated."

The institute's work is in line with the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce, or E-SIGN Act, signed into law by President Clinton last year.

Waegemann expressed his concerns in response to a provision of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that requires health-care providers, insurers and government programs--such as Medicare and Medicaid--to conduct their administrative transactions electronically by October 2002.

"We only have a privacy rule in place-we are waiting on a security rule...on the requirement for electronic signatures," he said. "We want to have [HIPAA] regulations include security requirements for e-signatures."

Waegemann wants insurance companies, hospitals, doctors and government agencies that use electronic signatures to process insurance claims and other billing records to also use an authentication code for each document. Computer networks used to transmit documents are vulnerable to fraud and theft, he said. Tight security standards are required to protect all parties involved in electronic claims and bill processing from liability, Waegemann said.

Health plans with gross revenues of less than $5 million have until Oct. 16, 2003, to comply with HIPAA, but all other health plans must comply by Oct. 16, 2002.