Tumbleweed Press Releases
Reliant Behavioral Health Deploys Tumbleweed's Email Firewall for HIPAA Compliance
Secure Email Delivery of Faxes Saves Processing Time and Improves Customer Service
Redwood City, CA - September 15, 2003 - Tumbleweed™ Communications Corp. (NASDAQ:TMWD), a leading provider of mission-critical Internet communications software for enterprises, financial services organizations and government, announced today that Reliant Behavioral Health (RBH), which manages behavioral health benefits for major health plans in the Pacific Northwest, has implemented the Tumbleweed MMS® email firewall, including the Tumbleweed MMS Secure Redirect® module for encrypted message delivery to any email client, as their HIPAA-compliant solution for secure email delivery of electronic faxes containing Protected Health Information (PHI).
As a healthcare organization managing benefits such as mental health and chemical dependency, RBH must comply with the privacy and security regulations of HIPAA, which require them to ensure the confidentiality and security of patient PHI. RBH handles a high volume of fax communication containing patient's confidential healthcare information received from behavioral health practitioners and facilities. The bulk of the content is related to describing a patient's treatment plan, which can be a large document of up to 20 faxed pages. As part of the benefits administration process, RBH was grappling with the management of banks of fax machines and fax lines, how to handle busy signals on the receiving fax machine, and misrouting of faxes to the wrong reviewer.
"It was critical to move from traditional faxing to secure electronic fax delivery because we deal with patients' Protected Healthcare Information," said Mark Lenetsky, Operations Manager for RBH. "Tumbleweed's email firewall allows us to not only secure the delivery of confidential patient faxes but get it to the right person at the right time."
Working with J2's eFax electronic faxing service, Tumbleweed is able to secure fax communications containing PHI between the receiving fax machine and the appropriate RBH reviewer. Faxes containing PHI are captured electronically and parsed by eFax, then encrypted by Tumbleweed's MMS email firewall and forwarded to a "master inbox" where the faxes are manually reviewed and sent to the appropriate reviewers' inboxes.
About Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed is a leading provider of solutions for managing secure communication and collaboration to enable the business Internet. Tumbleweed's robust policy-based framework empowers organizations to safely share and protect critical information, increase customer loyalty and privacy and dramatically reduce costs. Tumbleweed is trusted by 1,000 blue-chip customers including American Express, Chevron, Datek Online, the European Union's Joint Research Council, First Union Wachovia, John Deere, Merrill Lynch, Nike, Northern Trust, NTT, Salomon Smith Barney, Travelers and US Food and Drug Administration. One hundred of the Fortune 500 are Tumbleweed customers. Tumbleweed Communications was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., with offices around the world.
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to any legal or judicial interpretation of Tumbleweed's patents. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "potential", "continue", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "plans", "believes", "estimates" and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed's Form 10-K filed March 20, 2003. Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release.
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Contact:
Atomic PR
James Hannon
415/703-9454
james@atomicpr.com
Copyright 2001-2004
Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
All Rights Reserved
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