What is HIPAA?
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996) is a regulation designed to protect confidential healthcare information through improved security standards and federal privacy legislation. It defines requirements for storing patient information before, during and after electronic transmission. It also identifies compliance guidelines for critical business tasks such as risk analysis, awareness training, audit trail, disaster recovery plans and information access control and encryption. The HIPAA regulation has three main components that apply to “covered entities” (a covered entity is any provider of healthcare services that charges the government or insurance for their services): 1. Standard Transaction Code Sets 2. Patient Information Privacy 3.
• Restrict pre-existing condition exclusion periods to ensure portability of health care coverage between group plans and group to individual plans; • Require insurers participating in the small group market to offer and renew coverage to all employers in that market without excluding from enrollment any eligible worker due to health status; • Prevent discrimination against individuals eligible to enroll and continue to enroll in the group market; and guarantee renewal in multi-employer plans and multiple employer welfare arrangements (MEWAS); and • Prevent fraud and abuse in health care, simplify administrative procedures, and coordinate Medicare benefits. The effective date of the new federal requirements was the plan year beginning July 1, 1997 for both group and individual health plans. Highlights of the key provisions of HIPAA that impact employers follow.
HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Although most commonly referred to as “HIPAA”, it is the Privacy Standard of HIPAA that many researchers need to address, and which may require submission of authorization, waiver of authorization, or preparatory to research documents to the Privacy Board.
HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.The Administrative Simplification(AS)provisions HIPAA are intended to reduce the costs and administrative burdens of health care by making possible the standard, electronic transmission of many administrative and financial transactions that are currently carried out manually on paper.
