What is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)?
In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), amending ERISA and the Public Health Service Act. HIPAA protects health insurance recipients and sets medical data preservation and privacy guidelines.
How the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Works
According to HIPAA, individual healthcare plans must be accessible, portable, and renewable. It also establishes standards and means for sharing medical data across the U.S. health system to combat fraud. Unless state regulations are stricter, it preempts state law.
HIPAA has now included safe electronic storage and transmission of patient medical information since 1996. By setting national norms, administrative simplification provisions increase efficiency and save administrative expenses.
HITECH expanded HIPAA privacy and security in 2009. The HITECH Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, aims to promote health information technology utilization. Part of the HITECH Act covers privacy and security.
The Future of HIPAA
Bloomberg Law covered digital healthcare data privacy threats and the potential of revised federal rules in 2018. In an age of fitness-tracking apps and GPS-tracked, shareable data on anything from daily step count to average heart rate, prescriptions, allergies, and menstrual cycles, preserving and securing personal medical data is difficult.
In a video interview, Reed Smith LLP health privacy and security attorney Nan Halstead claimed future legislation won’t expand on HIPAA. Instead, they will style new digital sector legislation after HIPAA. In the absence of federal legislation, states can pass complementary laws. Additionally, the FDA and FTC oversee corporations that monitor customer data.
Conclusion
- HIPAA affects medical institutions, health insurers, HMOs, and healthcare billing services’ policies, technology, and records.
- Avoiding HIPAA rules and best practices is illegal.
- The 2009 HITECH Act expanded patient privacy and security under HIPAA.
