The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has undergone several modifications since coming into existence in 1996. The Act has tried to ensure that its provisions stay relevant in the changing healthcare environment and can continue to address the issues raised by all the parties involved.

The following points will bring out the importance of HIPAA to all the entities connected to healthcare as well as its significance to the industry itself.

– Importance to the Individual: The provisions of HIPAA have been formulated by keeping you in mind, whether it is in the capacity of a patient seeking treatment or as an employee wanting an insurance cover to safeguard yourself and your family. The importance of the Act is clearly reflected in the intention to provide you with a long term medical care and maintaining a health insurance cover over you in the event of changing jobs or in the case of losing one too. Furthermore regulations in pre-existing conditions have limited the period of evaluating them to the past 6 months and done away with pregnancy being one of the conditions. Also the previous insurance cover has been included in the newer one to reduce exclusion times. The list doesn’t end here, as HIPAA has several privacy rules to restrict distribution of your personal data to authorized entities only.

– Importance to Healthcare Facilities and Insurance Companies: The healthcare facilities or individuals working within like doctors and nurses, and employees of insurance companies are most susceptible to charges of breaching an individual’s privacy. However since any instructions are spelt out clearly by the individual in writing any such charges can be contested with adequate proof. Also the Act provides the people working in such facilities and companies with protection when disclosing personal information to certain bodies for billing or to government and law enforcement agencies.

– Importance to the Healthcare Industry: HIPAA, through its many administrative policies have tried to bring down expenditures by standardizing all electronic online transactions and prescribing a uniform format for maintaining records. By stipulating code sets and National provider Identifier, it has tried to simplify and regularize various activities. For ensuring the security and privacy of information in physical files and those stored in the electronic form, the Act has laid down strict regulations to be followed by healthcare providers and companies that manage your healthcare. Furthermore it has provisions to penalize entities that violate its rules or have been found guilty of fraud or any kind of abuse. This also includes infringing the rights of an individual by improper use of personal data. Such provisions can be very important for the healthcare industry as no medical facility wants to suffer loss of revenue by losing patients to other facilities or want to pay for expensive litigation not to mention a hit to the reputation. As most entities will prefer to toe the line and follow all regulations the industry as a whole will benefit.

The laws of HIPAA are of prime importance to all the parties attached to healthcare in some way or the other. And it performs the delicate function of balancing the interest of each entity while trying to strengthen the industry too.

For more information, please visit our hipaa website.

For more information, please visit our hipaa website http://www.hipaaviolations.com .

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

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: Healthcare Industry,Healthcare Facilities ,Insurance Companies,Health Insurance ,HIPAA