Question

Does HIPAA do enough or does it do too much to protect patient privacy?

Answer 1

Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 includes the three major provisions of Portability, Medicaid Integrity Program/Fraud and Abuse, Administrative Simplification.

The portability provisions of HIPAA dispense available and renewable health coverage and changes the pre-existing condition clause, under particular guidelines, for individuals who vary between employers and health insurance plans.

The Medicaid Integrity Program (MIP) ensures that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has a funding source for integrity activities and expands its authority to hire anti-fraud contractors. It ensures careful selection of service providers.

The administrative simplification maintains the standard transaction and code sets, identifiers, security, and privacy rules across the healthcare industry.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule protect individuals’ medical records and other personal health information with a national standard for the first time. HIPAA provides more control over patient’s health information and sets boundaries on the use and release of PHIs. HIPAA also establishes appropriate safeguards that health care providers and other relevant organizations must achieve to protect the privacy of health information.

HIPAA ensures accountability, with civil and criminal penalties in case of breach of patients’ privacy rights. HIPAA makes sure that the balance between some forms of data relevant to the public health protection is disclosed. It ensures that the patients can make informed choices when seeking care and reimbursement for care based on how personal health information may be used and to find out how their information may be used and the extent of disclosure. It ensures the patient’s right to obtain the copy of health records is and requests necessary corrections.

HIPAA takes the effective actions in maintaining the confidentiality of the patient records and limited disclosure in case of public interest is allowed. The efficient actions play an important role in the preservation of patient privacy.