HIPAA is an acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The HIPAA Act was created and introduced in 1996. Its full implementation did not occur until the year 2003. One of the reasons for the creation of HIPAA was to ensure that employees continued to have access to good health care if they were unemployed for any reason. Before HIPAA, it was nearly impossible to change insurance carriers without facing lowered coverage or excessive premiums. Another intention of HIPAA was to create a uniform system for dispersing sensitive personal health care related information.

2 Things HIPAA Cured

– Before HIPAA, if a person lost their health care coverage due to job lose or change; their current medical conditions could be classified as pre-existing conditions with their new company. This would then allow insurance companies to pay little for health care related to their pre-existing conditions. Even though they were paying insurance premiums the insurance would not cover pre-existing conditions. An example would be customers that enter into a new insurance coverage with the existing condition of diabetes. The person would be paying full premiums for their insurance, but their policy would not cover anything related to their diabetes care. As you can imagine this was completely unfair for those with existing conditions. HIPAA regulations now make it possible for those with pre-existing conditions to be covered by their new insurance company.

– HIPAA was able to secure your personal information. Before HIPAA was implemented your health care records were viewable by more people than you could imagine without any regulations. When you visit your doctor you assume that the doctor and the administrative help are the only ones viewing your information. But you have to think deeper than that. The health care circle doesn’t stop there. There are the insurance companies, software developers, pharmacies, and many other professionals that view your records. HIPAA makes all these individuals accountable for keeping your information confidential and secure. There are heavy fines if health care professionals break HIPAA rules.

If you have visited your doctor lately you may have been required to sign a privacy document. This is part of the implementation of HIPAA regulations. A HIPAA consent form will require you to indicate if anyone has permission to discuss your medical information on your behalf. Unless you have authorized the document, doctors, nurses, or administrative assistants are not permitted to discuss your information with anyone. An example of when this document could be implemented would be if your spouse called to confirm your appointment date and time. Unless you authorized your spouse on the HIPAA consent form they would not be able to give out any information.

There are many aspects to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Our health care system operates better now as a whole because of the implementation of this act. You can rest assured that you are getting better health care because of HIPAA. he HIPAA Act was created and introduced in 1996. Its full implementation did not occur until the year 2003. One of the reasons for the creation of HIPAA was to ensure that employees continued to have access to good health care if they were unemployed for any reason.

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