Question

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) mandated national standards for electronic exchange of administrative and financial healthcare transactions. Discuss all of the standards adopted. Did these standards improve healthcare reporting? If so, why? If not, why not? Did this Act put more burden on the physicians and their offices that did not relate to the quality of health care to the patient?

Answer 1

HIPAA is healh insurance portability and accountability act , established in 1996. According to this act ,the health related data of the worker and family and also the protection of their insurance coverage has to be ensured irrespective of the person has a job or not .

Two main functions are :-

- Portability - protection of insurance coverage for the worker and their family even when the worker has changed the job or has no job .

- Accontability - is maintaining confidentiality , protection of health related data of the worker.

The standards of HIPAA are :-

1. National provider identifier standard- means each healthcare entity such as individual , employees ,health plans healthcare plans must have a 10 digit national provider identifier number .

2. Transaction and code set standard- means health care sector /organisation must use a standardized method for electronic data interchange in order to submit and process insurance claims.

3. HIPAA privacy rule - it is officially known as standards for privacy of individual identifiable health information , it establishes standards to protect patient health information .

Privacy standards are :-

- it gives patient more control over their health information.

- it sets boundaries on the use and release of health information.

- it establishes appropriate safeguard which health care worker and others must achieve to protect the privacy of health information.

- it holds violators accountable( civil and criminal penalty) ,if any violation of privacy regarding health information of patient

- it maintains balance of public responsibility.

4. HIPAA security rule - the security standards for protection of electronic protected health information sets standards for patient data security. It consists of three levels of safeguard :-

A) Physical - four standards in physical safeguard are :-

- facility access control

- workstation use

- workstation security

- device and media control

-B) Adminstrative safeguard - are a collection of policies and procedures . There are 9 standards in this :-

- security management process

- assigned security responsibility

- workforce security

- information access management

- security awareness and training

- security.incident procedure

- contingency plan

- evaluation

- business associate.contracts and other arrangements

C) Technical - it focus on the technology that deal with patient health information . It has 5 standards :-

- access control by hving unigue id 's

- audit conrol by implementing hardware or software that recod the use of patients health information.

- integrity

- authentication

- transmission security

Yes , these standards helped in the proper management of health information related to patient because now there is a systematic transmission of data in a transparent way and also ensures accountability.

It does not add any burden to the staff as it reduced the over burden caused by discrepancy in data which was occurring in large scale before the introduction of these standards . These standards made the interchange of information transparent and accountable , also decreased the false blaming as staffs have their own unique ID's. It does have any effect on the quality of care provided to patients . Due to the computerised system itade things more easy and fast ,less time is required than the manual application.