It is a federal law enacted in 1996 as an attempt at incremental health care reform and specialists consider it to be the most important healthcare legislation since Medicare in 1965. click for more info
HIPAA’s intent is to reform the medical industry by reducing costs, simplifying administrative procedures and burdens, and enhancing privacy and security of individual’s information.
There are two different and distinct legislation which fall under the HIPAA umbrella: HIPAA Privacy and HIPAA Security. HIPAA Privacy relates to the protection and privacy of individuals’ protected health information (PHI) while HIPAA safety relates to the privacy and protection of individuals’ protected health information in electronic form (ePHI). HIPAA Privacy is what most people think about when we hear the term HIPAA ( HIPAA Awareness Training, Notice of Privacy Practices, Authorization types, etc )whereas HIPAA Security tends to be the focus of an organization’s IT department since it copes with encryption, digital security, disaster recovery, etc..
Do you have to worry about HIPAA? There are two Chief categories under HIPAA: Covered Entities and Business Associates. technology and compliance Covered Entities are those kinds of organizations/individuals that deal directly with protected health information and consist of health care providers, medical insurance providers, and company sponsored group health plans. Anyone out of those categories is known as a business partner. Business partners include medical billing companies, medical storage, advertising organizations, software companies, medical device manufacturers, etc..
