Regulations and Implementations
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is legislation passed in 1996 that safeguards the rights of employees and their families as it relates to their health insurance coverage whenever they transition or lose employment (Health IT.gov, 2016). The law required national guidelines and standards be developed concerning electronic health care exchanges as well as identifiers being assigned to providers, health insurance benefits, and employers to be recognized nationally (Health IT.gov, 2016). The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was implemented in 2009 granting Health and Human Services (HHS) the control over creating programs to enhance efficacy, safety, and overall quality of health care via health information technology (IT) with a focus on privacy and security during electronic health data interfacing (Health IT. gov, 2016).
Federal policy recognizes a total of eighteen different infrastructure divisions with two being healthcare and telecommunications
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Therefore, security and protection is dictated by where the healthcare data is initiated within the healthcare delivery system. Futuristically, the concept of security and privacy is determined by where patient’s data begins which creates a huge question of how to protect data exchange since today’s healthcare is so patient centric. Presently, the healthcare community is promoting increased patient involvement in their care via technology such as patient portals. Furthermore, implementing HIPAA and HITECH can seem restrictive and cumbersome to the patient thereby creating opposing forces between two very important goals of the future healthcare system: increased patient involvement as well as increased healthcare information