The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. federal legislative act enacted by the U.S. Congress in the year 1996 which provided the first nationally acknowledged disclosure of an individual’s health information privately and only as much as is required.

HIPAA is meant to improve the efficiency of the health care system in the U.S. by promoting the extensive use of electronic data interchange. These provisions are also known as the administrative simplifications collectively.

What you need to know about the HIPAA:

– HIPAA uses the term “covered entities” in regulating the Protected Health Information (PHI). Covered entities might be a healthcare service provider, an employer having accessed a group healthcare plan, healthcare clearing houses and health insurers

– The PHI of an individual maybe disclosed to facilitate treatment, payment or healthcare operations. However, HIPAA requires the covered entities to ensure the privacy of communications with individuals.

What you may not know about HIPAA:

– You must read HIPAA notices when you check your health records. In case you find an error, you can read the notice and know how to correct your records.

– If you think that your PHI was inappropriately used, you must file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services as the privacy rule requires.

– If a health insurer maintains a website, you should make a copy of their privacy policy which will be available on the website which will make it easier for finding the necessary HIPAA notices.

– If HIPAA notice is for a hospital, it is advised that you read the description of the institutions and providers covered because patient information maybe voluntarily shared among all the affiliated organizations without your consent for fundraising. In such cases you have the authority to ask the hospital to not use your records for such purposes.

What you should know about HIPAA

– In case of minor patients, parents are the patients’ representatives; hence, they have access to the medical records of their minor children. In exceptional cases when the parent is not the personal representative of the minor, the privacy rule pledges to the state to determine the rights of the parents to access the protected health information of their minor children.

– The privacy rule sets certain rules for the use/disclosure of an individual’s health information by covered entities and also certain standards which help the individuals with privacy rights to understand and control the use of their health information. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) under the Department of Health and Human Services administers and enforces such standards and conducts investigations in case of any complaint. Covered entities that fail to conform with the standard maybe subjected to penalties or criminal prosecution.

HIPAA stabilizes the standards and provisions of proper healthcare faculties along with the protection of an individual\’s healthcare information. The privacy rule to some extent regulates the disclosure of PHI without making it difficult to access healthcare facilities by allowing disclosure of personal information only under emergency conditions wherein any individual authorization is not required to be obtained by the authorities of public healthcare.

For more information, please visit our hipaa privacy rule website.

For more information, please visit our hipaa privacy rule website http://www.hipaaprivacyrule.com

Author Bio: For more information, please visit our hipaa privacy rule website.

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: hipaa privacy rule,health insurance providers,healthcare clearinghouses,Health care providers,Health