What is HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Under this rule, health insurers, certain health-care providers, and health-care clearinghouses must establish procedures and mechanisms to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information. Patients will have access to their medical records and more control over how their personal health information is used and disclosed. The HIPAA Privacy Rule is a federal regulation which creates national standards consisting of administrative steps, policies, and procedures to protect individuals’ medical records and other personal and private health information. The Privacy Rule guarantees patients access to their medical records, giving them more control over how their information is used and disclosed. The rule provides procedures to take if a patient’s medical privacy is compromised. The Privacy Rule requires health plans, pharmacies, doctors and other covered ...  more

HIPAA is an acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. HIPAA is the federal law that establishes standards for the privacy and security of health information, as well as standards for electronic data interchange of health information. HIPAA's Goals Include: Making health insurance more portable when persons change employers, and making the health care system more accountable for costs -- trying especially to reduce waste and fraud. HIPAA aims to improve accountability in part through what it calls administrative simplification -- a term that translates, roughly, as "promoting efficiency." The principal means of promoting efficiency is better use of information technology. Health care is -- or, at least at the time of the legislation, was -- still very "uncomputerized" compared to other parts of the economy, particularly in its use of paper for personal health records. Broader use of computer systems increased concerns about misuse of patient's health ...  more

A30. HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is a federal health benefits law passed in 1996. Part of the law, effective July 1, 1997, restricts pre-existing condition exclusion periods to ensure portability of healthcare coverage between plans, group and individual; require guaranteed issue and renewal of certain types of insurance coverage; prohibit plans from charging individuals higher premiums, co-payments, and/or deductibles based on health status. The legislation also establishes a four-year medical savings account (MSA) demonstration project. Another part of the Act, the Administrative Simplification provisions of the Act, mandated standards for electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions and code sets, establish uniform health care identifiers for providers, health plans, and employers and seek protections for confidentiality and security of patient data. Compliance to these provisions requires the use of ANSI ASC X12N (Version 4010) transaction ...  more

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is legislation that was enacted by Congress on August 21, 1996.The health care industry is about to face sweeping changes in how it handles and protects health information. These changes are mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which was enacted by Congress on August 21, 1996. HIPAA requires the promulgation of standards on how health care providers, plans and clearinghouses transmit and store health information in electronic form. The privacy and security standards apply to any organization handling health information pertaining to an individual that is electronically maintained or transmitted. They require health care entities to implement technical, administrative and physical security measures. Failure to comply with the security standards may result in civil fines of up to $25,000 for each violator. However, if a failure to provide adequate security results in a misuse of unique ...  more

HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was enacted by the federal government in 1996. The original intent of HIPAA was to help ensure the continuation of health insurance coverage when an individual left his or her job. HIPAA was then expanded to include a number of provisions to simplify and lower the costs of processing health information. A number of these provisions deal with the standardization of electronic transactions. Implementation of security standards is a subset of these provisions.  more

HIPAA is an acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Portability refers to the section that provides for the waiver of pre-existing conditions when persons who are covered under a group policy with their current employer move to a new employer. HIPAA portability provisions limit the ability of group health plans to exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions and prohibits the exclusion of individuals from coverage based on health status. As a part of the legislation, Congress incorporated a section called Administrative Simplification. This section of the law includes: * Standardization of electronic formats for transmission of nine transactions including claims, electronic remittance advice, eligibility, authorization, pharmacy, enrollment, coordination of benefits, attachments and first notice of claims, and * Security of electronic health information and electronic signatures, and * Privacy of patient identifiable information.  more

HIPAA, or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a federal health benefits law passed in 1996, effective July 1, 1997, which restricts pre-existing condition exclusion periods to ensure portability of healthcare coverage between plans, group and individual; require guaranteed issue and renewal of insurance coverage; prohibit plans from charging individuals higher premiums, co-payments, and/or deductibles based on health status. The legislation also establishes a four-year medical savings account (MSA) demonstration project. The Act mandates standards for electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions and code sets, establishes uniform health care identifiers for providers, health plans, and employers and seeks protections for confidentiality and security of patient data. Compliance to HIPAA requires the use of ANSI ASC X12N (Version 4010) transaction standards and implementation guides. The final rules for transactions and code sets were published in the Federal ...  more

HIPAA, or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a federal health benefits law passed in 1996, effective July 1, 1997, which restricts pre-existing condition exclusion periods to ensure portability of healthcare coverage between plans, group and individual; require guaranteed issue and renewal of insurance coverage; prohibit plans from charging individuals higher premiums, co-payments, and/or deductibles based on health status. The legislation also establishes a four-year medical savings account (MSA) demonstration project. The Act mandates standards for electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions and code sets, establishes uniform health care identifiers for providers, health plans, and employers. Compliance to HIPAA requires the use of ANSI ASC X12N (Version 4010) transaction standards and implementation guides. The final rules for transactions, code sets, privacy and security were published in the Federal Register on August 17, 2000. The compliance date of this ...  more

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), passed in 1996, is intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system in the United States. HIPAA has many parts. One section associated with "Administrative Simplification" has four main parts. The first part includes national standards for transactions of electronic patient health, administrative and financial data between health care providers and health plans. The second part, known as the "Privacy Rule", concerns the privacy of an individual's health information. The third part, known as the "Security Rule", addresses security standards for safeguarding health information maintained in electronic form. The fourth part sets up a system of national identifiers for employers, health plans and providers. The Privacy Rule which takes effect on 4/14/2003 and the Security rule which takes effect 4/20/2005 both affect research that uses health information that can be linked to the ...  more

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability Act of 1996) is a regulation designed to protect confidential healthcare information through improved security standards and federal privacy legislation. It defines requirements for storing patient information before, during and after electronic transmission. It also identifies compliance guidelines for critical business tasks such as risk analysis, awareness training, audit trail, disaster recovery plans and information access control and encryption. The HIPAA regulation has three main components that apply to “covered entities” (a covered entity is any provider of healthcare services that charges the government or insurance for their services): 1. Standard Transaction Code Sets 2. Patient Information Privacy 3.