Question

Summarize a HEALTHCARE LAW or REGULATION that you felt was especially interesting. Answer the following:

a. Which regulation did you choose and why?

b. How does this law or regulation affect healthcare organizations?

c. How does this law or regulation affect healthcare consumers?

d. What are the specifics of this law or regulation? When was it created? What is its purpose? What does it require?

e. Has it changed throughout the years? Has there been any amendments to the regulation?

f. How is it monitored or who makes sure organizations are in compliance?

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this can be any healcare law or regulations.

Answer 1

Healthcare Law or Regulation: HIPPA

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 1996 ( HIPPA):

a) The Law / regulation HIPPA felt as interesting as it is formerly and originally enacted for protecting the Healthcare workers, but now it has a great role in protecting patient's privacy.

HIPPA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed on 1996 , signed by President Bill Clinton. This act was passed for the portablity of insurance of healthcare workers and to regulate  the health care information .

The main purpose was to prevent abuse, fraud and to combat waste in healthcare delivery and health insurance .This enabled the workers to carry their insurance from company to company, and prevented the loss of employees' and families' insurance coverage, when they change the job or company. Currently HIPPA is mainly used for the purpose of preventing the breaches or violations on patient's data or information.

b) Healthcare organisations and HIPPA

All healthcare organisation such as Hospitals, nursing homes, dentistry , clinics and health care providers like physician, dentists etc has to follow the rules of HIPPA. Healthcare organisation or professionals and insurance companies are not allowed to hand over patient's information regarding, his physician name, disease, treatment etc. Any violation in HIPPA rules, the Healthcare organisations and professionals may attract heavy fines and actions.

c. Healthcare consumers or patients can file a case against hospitals or a health professionals , if he feels that his medical information has shared in an unauthorised way to a third party. Before sharing the information, Healthcare organisation should inform the patient about sharing the information and should take the approval . Patients can see their file any time on demand.

d) The law was enacted by 104th United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in the year of 1996. The law, as the name indicates, passed for facilitating the Insurance portability of Healthcare workers and their responsibility in keeping the information in a smooth and safe way. It protected the workers from lossing the Insurance coverage , when they leave one company. It also protected the workers amd patients from the fraud, abuse of healthcare information, insurance and services.

e) Changes or Amendments

After 1996 HIPPA enactment, changes were commented on 2013 due to the advancement in technology and information processing. The new rules under HIPPA were focused on the safeguard of electronically stored data. A new definition was given for the term ' Data breach'. It also recommended heathcare organisations to use a web filter to protect the data from cyber threat.

There were incidence of many HIPPA violation in 2016 and the hospitals and the health professionals got heavy fines to compensate the unintentional act.

f) Monitoring:

The US department of Health and Human Services ( HHS) office for Civil rights , monitors the companies and healthcare settings regarding the compliance with HIPPA. Any HIPPA breaches, they can investigate and take actions against the firm that is involved in HIPPA violation.