Question

A. Evaluate the efficacy of HIPAA  in addressing population needs without negatively impacting the target population or other populations.

B. Justify key areas of improvement that could better HIPAA

C. Recommend an appropriate HIPAA improvement.

D. Advocate for or against HIPAA in a concise, supported statement.

Answer 1

A. HIPAA

TheHealth Information Portability And Accountability (HIPAA) act was passed by U.S Congress in 1996 with the primary goals of making health care delivery more efficient and improving most of Americans with health insurance coverage.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule has a major goal to ensure that individuals’ health information is properly protected and also allowing the flow of information needed to promote high-quality health care.

HIPAA impact on Public Health

Public health practice and research, uses protected health information (PHI) to identify, monitor, and respond to disease, death, and disability among populations. The public health authorities have identified the role and importance of protecting individual privacy and respecting individual dignity to maintain the quality and integrity of health. The Privacy Rule permits PHI to be shared for specified public health purposes. An example is covered entities may provide PHI, without individual authorization, to a public health authority with legal authorization to collect or receive the information for the purpose of preventing or controlling disease, injury, or disability. Most of the covered entities should become aware of the scope of permissible disclosures for public health activities and also state and local reporting laws and regulations.

B. KEY AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT

HIPAA Privacy Rule is not protecting privacy as well as it should. Currently implemented HIPAA Privacy Rule impedes important health research.

1.HIPAA is not uniformly applicable to all health research,

2.It overstates the ability of informed consent to protect privacy rather than incorporating comprehensive privacy protections,

3. It conflicts with other federal regulations governing health research, (4) is interpreted differently across institutions.

4. HIPAA creates barriers to research and leads to biased research samples, which generate invalid conclusions. It's security breaches are a growing problem for health care databases.

C.IMPROVEMENT

To improve the situation of HIPAA, some goals should be maintained

1. Improving the privacy and data security of health information.

2. Improving the effectiveness of health research.

3. Improving the application of privacy protections for health research.