HIPAA Compliance Summary

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The first article was a summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In the article, there was an introduction on what HIPAA meant and its importance. First off, HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and it is a disclosure of patient information so that it is protected from unknown individuals and to assure that health providers abide by the privacy rule. Some key facts about HIPAA were, who was covered, what information is protected, and administrative requirements. Noncompliance and criminal penalties were some of the critical issues found in the article. Who is covered by the privacy rule? The privacy rule applies to health care plans, health care providers, and clearinghouses (U.S. Department of Health …show more content…

These consequences apply to individuals who are responsible for protecting patient information but he or she voluntarily exposes the information for personal gain. If that was to happen then there are criminal penalties such as fines and even jail time. The second article was on HIPAA DDE Requirements. Here is a brief summary of key factors and critical issues from the article. The article gave a description of what direct data entry (DDE) was and how DDE is the process of keying in data directly to providers from a health plan’s computer (Nachimson, 2002). The article stated that business associates can offer DDE as an option to health plans and also DDE can be customized as well. Since DDE is an option, health plans can offer DDE to certain providers but DDE system must meet the requirements of HIPAA because of the information that is transmitted via electronic. However, some critical issues involved were sending as a transaction which is not DDE and health care plans are not to offer incentives to use the DDE system. Also, electronic data interchange (EDI) could not replace DDE because it is an option to providers but EDI has to used (Nachimsom,