The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was created in 1996 to make sure that workers could keep their health insurance if they lost their job, changed jobs, or retired. The act also protects the privacy of sensitive personal health information by providing guidelines about disclosure, sharing, and transmission of this information. Medical records have moved into the electronic age. Electronic health records are replacing paper charts. The ability to access a person’s medical records quickly can prove to be life-saving in the event of an emergency, but the ease of obtaining this information also allows a lot of room for an unauthorized individual or entity to see these records as well. It is critical that this information …show more content…
This is good for business but not necessarily good for maintaining the privacy and security of this information. Title II under HIPAA establishes standards and guidelines for electronic transactions (3.08: HIPAA 101). The rules laid out in Title II allow the patient to have a lot of control on who is allowed to view their information. Payers are not permitted to view any medical information on a patient that is not directly related to the treatment that patient is receiving. HIPAA added the Administrative Simplification (AS) addition to the Social Security Act which set up guidelines for the code sets used in medical billing and coding: ICD codes, CPT codes, and HCPCS codes (3.08: HIPAA 101). Other code sets required under HIPAA are Health Care Provider Taxonomy codes, Country codes, Claim Adjustment Reason codes, Place of Service codes, and Claim Status codes (Code Sets). The AS also requires that all electronic transmissions be in the form an Electronic Data Interchange, a standardized form of electronic transaction (3.08: HIPAA 101). Payers must us the Accredited Standards Committee X12 (ASC