Health Insurance Articles
What You Need To Know About The Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act
2010-01-05
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is also known as HIPAA. HIPAA is a comprehensive law that affects the health-care industry in a variety of ways, including setting new standards for the privacy of health-care information. It is a federal law. The type of health information that the rule protects is called "protected health information" (PHI). PHI includes any information that, according to the act "identifies an individual or can be used to identify an individual and relates to the past, present or future physical or mental health of the individual, the provision of health care to the individual, or the past, present or future payment for health care for the individual."
To implement the new privacy standards, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a new regulation, known as the Privacy Rule. This rule regulates how certain "covered entities" may use and disclose the health information they have about individuals. Covered entities include health insurances, health care providers and health care clearinghouses. Therefore, in order to comply with HIPAA guidelines, these entities have to make every possible effort to ensure the identity of the individual - be it a provider or the beneficiary - before disclosing any confidential health information. The same applies to the family members of such, who, in some cases, are required to have a special permission, often times signed, before accessing any information. At the same time, the Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of personal health information via Internet technology (IT) needed for patient care and other important purposes. According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, "widespread use of health IT within the health care industry will improve the quality of health care, prevent medical errors, reduce health care costs, increase administrative efficiencies, decrease paperwork and expand access to affordable health care." HIPAA guidelines take a special look at this type of information and has a complete set of guidelines to be followed in that aspect.
The Privacy Rule also provides individuals with certain rights concerning their health information. This includes the right to be notified of how a covered entity uses and discloses their health information. As an example of that, Medicaid agencies are obligated to provide all health care information on their possession and the list of individuals with which such information was shared upon the beneficiary's request.
In a world of electronic systems in which fraud and leaks of information are a constant concern, the HIPAA law has been proven indispensable. Though the bureaucratization of otherwise simple processes caused by confidentiality concerns is real, the protection of an individual's safety and health is of the utmost importance.
