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What Is HIPAA?
HIPAA is the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. There are two sections to the Act. HIPAA Title I deals with protecting health insurance coverage for people who lose or change jobs. HIPAA Title II includes an administrative simplification section which deals with the standardization of healthcare-related information systems. In the information technology industries, this section is what most people mean when they refer to HIPAA. HIPAA establishes mandatory regulations that require extensive changes to the way that health providers conduct business.
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HIPAA seeks to establish standardized mechanisms for electronic data interchange (EDI), security, and confidentiality of all healthcare-related data. The Act mandates: standardized formats for all patient health, administrative, and financial data; unique identifiers (ID numbers) for each healthcare entity, including individuals, employers, health plans and health care providers; and security mechanisms to ensure confidentiality and data integrity for any information that identifies an individual.
HIPAA Topics Recommended by Google
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Featured HIPAA Article
CMS Begins HIPAA Security 'Compliance Reviews' in Regular New Effort Unrelated to Prior OIG Audits
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HIPAA Articles
Hospitals Are at Risk When 'Family Doctors' Go Too Far With Records
Hospitals are full of physicians who treat their own family members — the plastic surgeon who gave his wife an eye job; the dermatologist whose daughter gets her Accutane scripts from dear old dad. In these cases, the doctor would appear to have a legitimate need to access the wife's and daughter's medical records, although it could be argued that the treatment relationship is ethically questionable.
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HIPAA Security and Compliance
People always ask, “Does this apply to me?” Well it depends on what your lawyer says. HIPAA says Covered Entities (CEs) must comply with the Security Rule. The bottom line is, if you are sending electronic claims to the insurance companies or sending patients e-mail or instant messages —- you are a CE and HIPAA security applies to you.
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HIPAA: Applications in Research
College health professionals have long served their university’s academic community by participating in efforts to assure the protection of human subjects in research. An integral part of protecting human subjects is providing for the privacy of their protected health information (PHI). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 requires researchers who use PHI to provide privacy and security guarantees.
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HIPAA Videos
Privacy, Security, and You: Protecting patient confidentiality under HIPAA
This 30-minute video combines two components of the HIPAA regulation-privacy and security--into one training video. It's the first all comprehensive video product to reach the market that covers both privacy and security training on one convenient package.
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HIPAA Implementing the Administrative Simplifications
To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 included a series of "administrative simplification" provisions that required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to adopt national standards for electronic health care transactions. By ensuring consistency throughout the industry, these national standards will make it easier for health plans, health care clearinghouses, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers to process claims and other transactions electronically. The law also requires the adoption of privacy and security standards in order to protect individually identifiable health information.
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Protecting Patient Safety
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