The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has placed various restrictions on the way protected information of patients is accessed and used by health care providers. This will ensure that only people who are authorized to access it will be able to do so and any sort of unauthorized access will be prevented.

There are various health care providers and other organizations who would like to have access to confidential information of patients for research purposes and medical studies.

Top 5 HIPAA Regulations For Research

1. There are various researchers who would like access to protected information of patients for conducting research studies on different ailments and treatment procedures. They would be able to gain access to it if the patients authorize them to do so. There is usually an authorization form that can be used for this purpose. The authorization can be revoked by the individual who had granted access if the research studies are completed.

2. If the researchers would like to have access to patient records for any research project they can request hospitals to provide with the requisite number of records to complete the project. Although they can get access to the records the researchers should not be contacting the patient in this regard. The U.S Department of Health and Human Services does not allow researchers to get in touch with patients for any research purposes. Apart from this they would also not be allowed to remove any such information from the hospital, clinics or any other organization that allows access to this protected information.

3. The researcher need not require individual authorization to access the confidential medical information of patients if they have a receipt from the Institutional Review Board. The board that is constituted by institutions will have the power to provide waiver from individual authorizations. The board will review the research that will be done and based on this it will grant permission to researchers to access protected information of patients.

4. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act will allow researchers access to the confidential information of patients if the information has been de-identified. There are a total of eighteen identifiers that need to be removed to fulfill this condition. The various identifiers that need to be removed include name, address and age to name just a few.

5. Apart from this hospitals can also allow access of protected information to researchers on a limited data. There is usually an agreement between the hospital and the researcher and this allows for access for such information. The information that is allowed is similar to de-identified data but contains slightly more data than that.

Although the protected information of patients is allowed for research purposes there are some very strict guidelines that need to be followed by the researchers and hospitals. This is done to ensure that the confidential information that is accessed in not misused in any way. The security and privacy rules that are stipulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act need to be followed.

For more information, please visit our HIPAA Training website.

For more information, please visit our HIPAA Training website http://www.hipaaexams.com/hipaa-training.html

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Category: Medical Business
Keywords: health care organizations ,HIPAA,Health Insurance ,HIPAA Compliant