The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Essay Example for Free

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Essay The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA got enacted in the year 1996 by U. S Congress. The first title of HIPAA offers protection to the workers as well as the families when they decide to change their jobs or incase they lose jobs. The second title of HIPAA which is also known as Administrative Simplification does require for establishments of the national standards of electronic care transactions, employers, the plans of health insurance and the national providers. This paper hence gives limelight to what HIPAA is all about and the people who ought to comply with the standards of HIPAA. HIPPA which was enacted in the year 1996 does require the HHS secretary to publicize all the standards for electronic exchange, security of the health information as well as privacy. The new standards are integral and are developed in order to offer protection to the integrity, confidentiality as well as the availability of the health information (Department of health Human services, n. d). In the past there were no any standards that offered uniform and comprehensive protection of the health information. The new HIPAA’S security standards will offer correct access of health information by the health providers, health plans, clearinghouses offering the appropriate safety measures against dissemination and misuse. The Electronic Signature Standard will offer a reliable way to assure there is message integrity, non repudiation and authentication. The covered entities ought to comply with the standards of HIPAA. The covered entities comprise of Health plans, health providers who do transmit any health information through electronic form and the Health Care Clearinghouses (Department of Health Human Services, n. d). The health plans include group or individual plans that offer or pay costs of the medical care which are covered in the entities. They comprise of vision, dental, vision, drug insurers, health organizations and maintenance, Medicaid, Medicare as well as the long term insurers (HIP, 2008). They also include the church and government sponsored health plans, employer groups and others. Every health provider who does transmit the health information electronically is also covered by this entity. The healthcare clearing houses are those entities that do process some of the nonstandard information that they do receive from other entities to a standard. The main benefits of HIPAA regulations to the healthcare organizations are the fact that the standardization of the electronic data will improve the transfer of information between the provider and the payer. Also HIPAA is beneficial as the codification of standards of the electronic data will trigger the medical providers to effectually move their medical services to the internet(Bureau for Medical Services, 2008). HIPAA will also offer the healthcare organizations with a prospect to simplify as well as streamline their infrastructure and operations offering important savings potential. With the implementation of the standards of HIPAA the administrative needs might decrease. The standards of HIPAA do not apply to the employers, casualty, life, disability and workers insurers as well as other health information users. The major goal of HIPAA’s privacy rule is to make sure that the individual’s information on health is protected and there is flow of the health information that is required to offer as well as promote quality healthcare in order to offer protection to the well being of the public. The privacy rule offers protection to people seeking healing and care and given the fact that the marketplace for healthcare is quite diverse, this rule is hence designed in a comprehensive and flexible way to cover disclosures and uses that ought to be addressed.