Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act better known as HIPAA is a law that all health experts have to use. HIPAA put in place to become a standard for all medical offices. HIPAA has gone through many changes and is still going through changes today. HIPAA history, security rule, privacy rule, misinterpretation and legal penalties are all important in understanding the HIPAA laws.
HIPAA was passed into law in August of 1996 under the Clinton administration. The goal of HIPAA was to modernize information exchange in healthcare. Clinton also wanted to make sure that people had health insurance in between jobs. In 1998 the Security Rules were added to HIPAA. The Security Rule was made to improve security standards on patients health information. It also came with the use of electronic signature. In 2000 the government started to discuss the Privacy Rule. This new rule would restrict the disclosure of patient information. It would also make it easier to get access to your own health records. The
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Some doctors over use consent forms, HIPAA says that if you are sending patient electronic protected health information to another doctor for treatment then you do not need to have you patient sign a consent form because they expect you to send the doctor the information they need to treat them. Other offices make people that are not going to be working directly working with patient information like a custodian sign a business associate agreements. This is unnecessary according to HIPAA and they should only have to sign a confidentiality agreements saying that if they come across patient information they will not touch it or read it and if they do they will not tell anyone what it