What Is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)?
Let me explain what HIPAA really is. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 that updates both the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Public Health Service Act (PHSA). You should know that HIPAA exists to safeguard people with health insurance and to establish rules for how personal medical data is stored and kept private.
Key Takeaways
Here's what you need to grasp about HIPAA. This law affects policies, technology, and record-keeping in places like medical facilities, health insurance companies, HMOs, and healthcare billing services. If you don't comply with HIPAA standards and best practices, you're breaking the law. Also, remember that the HITECH Act came along in 2009 to broaden HIPAA's privacy and security measures for patients.
How the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Works
You might wonder how HIPAA actually functions in practice. It makes sure that individual health-care plans are accessible, portable, and renewable, while defining standards and methods for sharing medical data throughout the U.S. health system to stop fraud. HIPAA overrides state laws unless those state rules are stricter.
Since its start in 1996, HIPAA has evolved to cover safe ways to store and share patient medical information electronically. It includes provisions for administrative simplification, which aim to boost efficiency and cut administrative costs through national standards.
Then, in 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) stepped in to widen HIPAA's privacy and security protections. Enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, HITECH promotes health information technology, with a section specifically tackling privacy and security issues.
The Future of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
Looking ahead, consider what might come next for HIPAA. In 2018, Bloomberg Law highlighted the privacy risks from digital healthcare data and the potential for new federal laws soon. In today's world of fitness-tracking apps and GPS-monitored data on things like daily steps, heart rates, medications, allergies, and even menstrual cycles, there are fresh challenges in maintaining standards for storing and protecting personal medical data.
In a video interview, Nan Halstead, a health privacy and security attorney at Reed Smith LLP, noted that future laws probably won't expand HIPAA itself. Instead, they'll build on its framework to create new regulations for the digital space. While no federal laws like this have passed yet, states can step in with their own rules in the meantime. Plus, companies handling consumer data are already overseen by agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
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