Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act: HIPAA

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-HIPAA, was introduced in Congress as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Bill and later passed in 1996. Before HIPAA, there was no federal standardization when it came to health care programs and information, and it was up to the state to create these rules and regulations. The rules and regulations were also fragmented among government agencies. Since there was no standard authority to combat against fraud and abuse in state and federal health care programs, it became a major issue that could not be ignored. For this reason, HIPAA was created with the objective to provide provisions for the prevention of fraud and abuse, and to ensure that individuals would be able to maintain their health insurance between

Because of this, HIPAA also include mandates to set standards for transmitting electronic health data including administrative and financial data relating to patient health information. This was to promote the increase use of computers in healthcare industries, and once again the states came up with their own laws to enforce security and privacy over medical information. This would be later be standardize by federal laws with the introduction of Privacy Rule and Security Rule, which is what most people associate or knows HIPAA as. HIPAA has five Titles with a specific purpose to address a specific issue. Here are the summary and main points for each that one should know in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the need for

Tile II started as provisions to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in healthcare industry. Several fraud and abuse control programs were established and makes revisions to previous sanctions and criminal law. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) were in charge of investigating Medicare fraud and presenting cases for criminal or civil prosecution. Afterwards, states made their own implementation rules in order to comply with HIPAA. With states having variations in their rules, laws, and regulations, the nation’s healthcare industry became inefficient and ineffective. Then the HHS decided to establish security and privacy requirements for patient health information; standards for electronic health care transactions; creating the national identifiers (for providers, health insurance providers, employers, patients); encouraging the widespread use of electronic data interchange in healthcare system. All of these standardizations, became known as Administrative Simplification, which has Rules that addresses specific issues in order to create basic standards for states to follow (and improve