HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act. The act was passed in 1996 in order to have national standards that protect privacy of individual’s personal health information (PHI) through the Privacy Rule of the Department of Health and Human Services. This law is supposed to protect patient’s health information through the establishment of standards for transaction while exchanging health information, privacy standards and security standards while using and disclosing individual’s identifiable health details. HIPAA is concerned with the privacy and security of all health details and this applies to employer group medical insurance and healthcare providers. Anyone who has any contact with documentation that belongs to patients must be well educated on HIPAA Compliance Lexington KY.

HIPAA Principles:

• Improvement of the continuity and Portability of health plans or insurance coverage for groups and even for individuals.
• To fight fraud, abuse and waste in healthcare delivery and insurance.
• To reduce the costs and administrative burdens that are present in Healthcare by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the Healthcare system through the standardization of interchanges of electronic information for specific financial and administrative transactions.
• Ensuring the privacy and protection of the people’s personal health information via the protection of the confidentiality and security of these Healthcare records.

Complying With HIPAA:

There are various ways in which one can qualify to become a “Covered Entity” which may be needed to adhere to HIPAA’s terms. There are those that are obvious like those in healthcare. In the event that a firm is eligible to be a “health plan,” then it automatically falls under Covered Entity. Health plan refers to organizations that provide care in the medical industry including services and items that get paid for in medical care to employees and employee’s dependents whether directly or by use of insurance. If your organization provides its employees with medical care under a self insured cover then you are under HIPAA. There are organizations that fall under “Healthcare clearinghouse” based on the responsibilities that they have when processing Healthcare data.

There Are Two Specified Regulations That Are Of Interest Once An Organization Is Under HIPAA. They Are:

• HIPAA Privacy Rule; this protects identifiable individual protected health information (PHI) that’s kept by any covered entity. This rule is not specific to any electronic details and is applied to telephone conversations, written records, and so on. The health and human sciences department states that the following is what PHI relates to;
  • A person’s mental condition whether in the past, now or in the future.
  • Provided health care of a person or
  • Payment for said provision of Healthcare whether in the past, now or in the future.
• HIPAA Security Rule; this rule is concerned with electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) that may be created, used, maintained or used by any covered entity. This rule needs the carrying out of three safeguards;
  • Administrative
  • Physical
  • Technical

There are security standards that are known for each safeguard and for every standard; both the addressable and required implementation specifications are named. All required specifications must be administered and ratified just as the rule dictates. As for addressable specifications, there is some flexibility as covered entities are allowed to assess the situation then decide what way to implement the specifications.

In conclusion, compliance services Lexington KY points out what regulations and standards hospitals are required to comply with so that they can steer clear of potentially disastrous fines.