HIPAA Medical Practice Analysis
HIPAA Laws
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was enacted to ensure patient privacy is upheld and protected against unauthorized access. The purpose of this essay is to research HIPAA laws by describing the history, definition, and its importance in a medical office.
History
HIPAA is a set of laws that was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton on 21st August 1996 and known initially as Kennedy-Kassebaum Bill (Tovino, 23). The objective of the act was to enhance the efficiency of health care delivery and increase the number of health-insured Americans. The three major provisions of the law were:
- The portability provisions
- The tax provisions
- The administrative simplifications provisions (Tovino, 25).
The roots of HIPAA rates back in the early 1990s when the need to computerize medical records became ostensible. The healthcare industry needed new standards to manage patient data following the intensified increase in electronic transmission of patient information (Tovino, 25). On this note, the HIPAA privacy rule was disseminated under the third provision. The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was instructed by HIPAA provisions to issue regulations regarding such information transmission (Tovino, 25). The key focus of these provisions was to standardize the use of electronic health information. As such, nationwide security standards to develop privacy standards for health information were developed under the HIPAA mandate. Nonetheless, following the enormous volume of public comments regarding the HIPAA proposal, the privacy rule evolved through various iterations before the issuance of the final version in 2002 (Tovino, 26).
Definition
HIPAA is a series of laws that require health care organizations to focus on training for strict compliance. It refers to the U.S. legislation, which advocates for the safeguarding of data privacy and medical information (Tovino, 2). The recent increase in cyber-attacks on health providers and insurers causing data breaches, the law has developed into greater prominence.
The Importance of a Medical Office
HIPAA prompts essential benefits to healthcare organizations. Firstly, it helps to reduce the need for paperwork, which is tiresome and time-consuming. With HIPAA laws, the health care staff use electronic copies to transmit information and hence increasing the durability of patient records (Tovino, 3). Further, the standards of electronic transactions ease the means of data transfer among health plans, healthcare providers, and other entities (Tovino, 3). Such is because a standard code sets are used by all the HIPAA-covered entities and hence standardizing the data transfer channels.
Additionally, the approach minimizes the risks of data distortion. With the protection of sensitive patient information, the HIPAA regulations enable medical organizations to establish trust with the patients (Tovino, 4). Patients get assured of confidentiality with the organizations covered by HIPAA. As such, they control over who should have access to their information, with the surety of strict security controls. HIPAA provides the opportunity for the active participation of patients in their health care (Tovino, 6). As such, patients can obtain copies, and while healthcare organizations can make errors in their records, patients can detect such and have them corrected. In this regard, they aid in minimizing treatment errors and wrong diagnosis.
Figure 1
In summary, the HIPAA regulations play a critical role in enhancing the protection of patient privacy. The paper featured a brief history of HIPAA laws, enacted in 1996. The paper also elaborated on the importance of these laws in the medical office. The overall objective of HIPAA is to ensure the protection of patient information in the era of computerized medical systems.
Works Cited
McKinstry, Clifford J. “The HIPAA Privacy Rule: Flawed Privacy Exposed When Compared with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.” Journal of Health Care Finance (2018).
Tovino, Stacey A. “Complying with the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Problems and Perspectives.” (2016).