Wisconsin Hospital Data Sharing: Enterprise Solutions for the Post-Charge Era

Charging individuals for hospital data is a standard practice among healthcare providers in most states, but Wisconsin is a rare exception. 

Most state laws allow healthcare providers to bill patients for the time and resources required to release medical records. However, in Wisconsin, providers can not charge patients when sharing electronic copies of their health data.

HIPAA still requires Wisconsin providers to respond to record requests within 30 days. These challenges can impact an organization’s financial growth, regulatory compliance, and staffing.

If your practice struggles to balance Wisconsin’s hospital data sharing requirements with financial success, ChartRequest can help.

Wisconsin compliance laws don’t need to slow you down. Partner with a record vendor you can trust.

The CEO Guarantee: Save 33% While Enhancing Efficiency

Trends toward digitization in the healthcare industry prove physicians care about record speed and accuracy during care coordination.

Considering recent regulatory changes, updated federal mandates may tighten record turnaround times in the future. These revisions may impact laws like:

• The HIPAA Right of Access Initiative: Enforces penalties for noncompliance with HIPAA turnaround requirements.
• The 21st Century Cures Act: Prohibits information blocking and enhances the interoperability of Health IT platforms.
• Specific State Statutes: Depending on your state, local laws may require faster record turnaround times. For example, California requires physicians to release copies of medical records within 15 days of the request.

ChartRequest is purpose-built to simplify compliance and reduce health information exchange costs by 33%. We help healthcare providers in Wisconsin achieve these savings by reducing their dependency on physical office systems and offering streamlined workflows to save staff time.

ChartRequest Eliminates Paper, CDs, and More For Wisconsin Hospital Data Sharing

The release of information is tedious. In fact, the full ROI process includes over 40 steps designed to protect patient privacy and keep data secure. 

Matters get worse when you factor in traditional methods of record release, like faxing and mailing. Take a look at how these methods can impact the ROI process:

Faxing Medical Records 

Faxing is burdensome on staff. With a 5-8% average failure rate and the risk of human error, faxing is too inconsistent for the urgent needs of healthcare professionals. 

Burning CDs With Imaging Records 

Copying physical CDs can be costly and inaccessible to many healthcare providers. Thanks to the prevalence and ease of digital data, most modern computers no longer include built-in CD drives. This disadvantage makes accessing imaging records on CDs challenging for the average patient. 

Mailing Patient Records 

Snail mail can be a compliance risk for both you and the recipient. From accidental deliveries to intentional theft, a single mailing error can expose a patient’s data to unauthorized viewers.

Our all-in-one software solution resolves these common challenges with instant network encryption and accurate delivery.

Flexible Partnership Options To Fit All Wisconsin Hospital Data Sharing Needs

Release of information needs and capabilities vary from practice to practice. Factors like specialty, location, and provider count can impact how many requests healthcare providers receive in any given month. 

Providers in Wisconsin generally select from one of two options: Staff Augmentation or ChartRequestPro.

Staff Augmentation: Our Team, Our Software

Staff Augmentation is a flat-rate remote staffing solution offered by our team. We designed this partnership to allow healthcare organizations access to compliance experts who maintain our 5-day turnaround guarantee. 

This solution is ideal for practices that struggle with staffing or want to simplify the release of information.

Learn More About Staff Augmentation.

ChartRequestPro: Your Team, Our Software

ChartRequestPro gives healthcare teams access to the leading release of information software. We built our software to streamline compliance, minimize risk, and reduce the time taken per request.

This service plan is ideal for practices that already have a quality record management team. While it won’t eliminate the need for processing requests, it offers your team the tools to handle each one in a fraction of the time. 

Learn More About ChartRequestPro.

Enterprise-Grade Features Support Efficiency and Scalability

The healthcare industry has the highest annual growth rate for data creation at 36%, which accounts for about 30% of all data created worldwide. 

This growth highlights the urgent need for powerful record release tools and insights. 

In addition to centralizing the electronic release of medical, imaging, and billing records, ChartRequest offers exclusive enterprise features that boost transparency and business growth. Examples include:

• Enterprise Routing Alerts: This feature accelerates response times by sending automatic alerts to the correct team or department. 

• Scheduled Reports: We help your leadership team stay on top of important record release insights like average turnaround time, request volume, individual performance, and more. 

• Ad-Hoc Reports: ChartRequest enables your team to pull custom operational reports in an instant. 

No matter how quickly your practice grows, ChartRequest can scale with you to provide fast turnaround times and white-glove service.

Minimize Fax Dependence Without Losing Fax Capabilities

While faxing may not be the perfect solution, approximately 70% of healthcare organizations still depend on it for record exchange. 

ChartRequest helps hospitals in Wisconsin move away from fax-based data sharing workflows while still meeting the needs of practices that only use fax. This perk does not require additional work during the record release process.

When requestors need records faxed, they can select ‘fax’ as the delivery method during request creation. In this case, the request fulfillment process does not change.

The requestor, however, can enjoy benefits such as:

• Instant notifications after a successful fax
• Eliminated risk of human errors such as sending records to the wrong number
• High-quality transmission to improve record legibility

This solution makes ChartRequest the most versatile tool for medical record exchange. Whether the requestor wants records released via fax or instant download, we can help.

Compliance and Interoperability

In the dawn of EHR technology, entrepreneurs and experts worked to develop the best systems possible. However, they created these programs in a vacuum and the lack of focus on interoperability created vast data silos.

Fast forward to the present day, and interoperability is an essential aspect of compliance. 

From HIPAA protections to Cures Act requirements, ChartRequest enhances interoperability to make compliance as simple as possible.

Industry-Leading Compliance

ChartRequest prioritizes your compliance above all else; from state statutes to federal regulations. For instance, we monitor regulatory changes as part of our routine, 250+ pricing algorithm updates. 

This advantage means hospitals in Wisconsin can trust that we won’t charge their patients for electronic data sharing. It also means that we go above and beyond with security features such as:

• Role-Based Access Controls
• High-End Encryption
• Comprehensive Audit Logging

Additionally, our HITRUST and SOC 2 Type II certifications highlight our commitment to upholding military-grade security standards.

HITRUST

HITRUST is a security framework that helps businesses assess risk factors and understand measurable criteria and objectives for “appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards.” 

SOC 2 Type II

SOC 2 Type II is an auditing procedure that sets industry standards for managing data. The five service principles of SOC 2 Type II include: 

1. Security
2. Availability
3. Processing
4. Confidentiality
5. Privacy

As regulatory updates reshape the industry, ChartRequest will continue to uphold our above-and-beyond standards to keep your patients safe and your practice compliant.

Interoperability at Its Core

Seamless access to patient data is essential for value-based care. Fast data exchange helps prevent duplicative tests or treatments and nurtures care coordination. 

ChartRequest works with all EHR systems on the market. Our platform also supports connections with major Health Information Network (HIN) systems such as:

• Carequality: This network-to-network framework connects data sharing locations with a trusted exchange framework and common agreement (TEFCA). The framework ensures data interoperability between HINs.
• CommonWell Health Alliance: CommonWell offers standardized tools for a secure and accessible health data exchange across participating providers.
• Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs): ChartRequest will seamlessly connect with new QHINs as they come online to help ensure readiness for the next era of interoperability.

As new TEFCA standards roll out, ChartRequest will continue to align with the standards to ensure uninterrupted access to their QHIN networks.

Additionally, ChartRequest features full integration with ModMed, RainTree, and athenahealth to automate data retrieval from these systems. Moving forward, we’ll expand this list to include other major EHR systems as well.

Unparalleled Relationships With Insurance Companies

Requests from law firms, patients, and other providers can pile up quickly. However, the stress of receiving a bulk request from an insurance or auditing entity can overwhelm staff with traditional methods of record release.

ChartRequest offers the tools and support your practice needs to avoid audit stress. We have proven relationships with major insurers, such as:

• Aetna
• Elevance
• Centene
• Humana
• UnitedHealthcare 
• Many more

Our platform offers these entities customizable APIs to help you meet their needs and preferences. Additionally, our concierge-level support simplifies complex workflows to minimize back-and-forth communication.

A Better Alternative to Legacy Vendors For Sharing Wisconsin Hospital Data

Some release of information vendors prioritize profit over their partners. This problem leads to issues like outdated pricing and billing practices in Wisconsin. 

At ChartRequest, our actions and policies demonstrate an investment in your success and compliance. By maximizing cost savings with operational efficiency, our solutions offer unmatched scalability at predictable costs. 

Ready to learn how your practice could save 33% on record exchange costs in Wisconsin? Automate the release of information with Staff Augmentation.