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Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act

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In August of 1996, Congress enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA. The primary purpose of HIPAA was to protect an individual from losing their health insurance; If they decided to change jobs or have pre-existing conditions. Another purpose of HIPAA was to reduce the costs and administrative burdens of healthcare by creating electronic formats. HIPAA is also used to develop standards and requirements to protect the privacy and security of protected health information. HIPAA consist of five titles. The main two important titles were title I and II. Title I focuses on the health insurance reform. The second title of HIPAA, applies to the Administrative simplifications; in which, includes the electronic transactions and code sets, unique indemnifiers, privacy and security. However, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), was required to issue two separate Regulations referred to as the Privacy Rule and the Security rule. The administrative simplification Provisions of HIPAA required the DHHS to publish standards for electronic exchange, privacy and security of health information. The main goal of the privacy rule was to protect the use and disclosure of an individuals protected health information . The privacy rule began on April 14, 2003. The Office for Civil Rights was responsible for enforcing the privacy rule and the security rule. OCR enforcement activities have obtained significant results that

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