HIPAA Description And Analysis

Understanding of HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA is an act formed to protect the people. The act sets rules and regulations around healthcare providers, small practices, insurance companies, consulting firms, and third party administrators involved in the health service process. (Dhillon, 2015) HIPAA requires privacy for medical information, specifically, personal history information or PHI. (Dhillon, 2015) HIPAA sets the rules on standardization, technical practices, and information systems processing. Their rules also focus on confidentiality and security standards for the industry. The confidentiality and security standards apply to individual’s health information whether permitted orally or written.

HIPAA rules and regulations provide a standard method of communication thus increasing the usefulness of reporting. (Health & Human Services) HIPAA demonstrates through its standardization process to maximize comparability and quality when delivering healthcare and processing claims. (Dhillon, 2015) With set guidelines on how to communicate health information the reporting is more useful. Standard language is easy to communicate to parties involved such as healthcare providers, small practices, insurance companies, consulting firms, and third party administrators thus creating efficiencies across the board. HIPAA express awareness by setting guidelines and tackling tough decisions to help the people using the healthcare system. HIPAA examines vulnerabilities in the information technology systems by executing compliance audits. (Dhillon, 2015) The audit considers the organization’s current policies, processes, and technology in comparison to HIPAA regulations. Departures are noted and require remediation and analysis of reoccurrence. This compliance process helps mitigate risks faced by the

It was noted that both New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia Medical Center violated the electronic protection of health information for about 7,000 people. The health information was found on the popular search engine Google. The electronic data was made available after an unsuccessful deactivation of a server hosting the sensitive information. HIPAA proves to be helpful in the health industry because fines and fees this hefty make healthcare providers, small practices, insurance companies, consulting firms, and third party administrators cautious of mindless behavior resulting in individual’s identity and personal health information in the hands of the public without consent.