Essay On HIPAA

The goals of HIPAA are to ensure medical coverage scope for workers and their families when they change or lose their employments and to secure wellbeing information trustworthiness, classification, and accessibility. The objectives are also to enhance our health care framework by making it more proficient, less difficult, and less

There have been many instances of unauthorized viewing of medical records. Unauthorized viewing of patient records is a violation HIPAA. The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires that “protected health information should not be used or disclosed when it is not necessary to satisfy a particular purpose or carry out a function” (Health and Human Services.gov). The case study in which Joe, a staff member accessed medical information after he was allowed access to the hospital to change lightbulbs and the case study in which the daughter of a nurse accessed medical information as a result of the mother leaving the computer unlocked and unattended, are HIPAA violations (i.e both people accessed the medical information illegally). Joe was tasked with changing a lightbulb, but was curious about a patient he knew on a personal level, his neighbor. Joe intentionally accessed his neighbor’s patient file at an empty workstation after the nurse manager neglected to log out or lock the computer before walking away.

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is United States legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information. No one is completely perfect but we do have to be really careful with how in the medical field we take care of the medical record or any other information that should not be given. All that information must be kept private unless the patient of the information gives any authorization for it to be release. Even the most important hospitals or well-known physicians have or been involved with a HIPAA violation.

Technology is always out there and improving. Many hospitals and practices have electronic health records. Electronic records make it easier for a patient to access their own records and to increase the quality of care for a person and their safety (Sittig & Singh, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to address electronic health records and the different steps a facility goes through to obtain an electronic health record

With the use of EHR comes the opportunity for patients to receive improved coordinated care from medical professions and easier access to their health data. The author identifies views about the problems of EHR and the legislation. Health care professionals understand and accept the obligations under the Privacy and Security, patient’s information can still be at breached if those involved in patient health do not make sure that their information is secured. There is an increased risk of privacy violations with EHR if used improperly. Even though there are legislations in place to protect patient’s information, data still can be easily accessed either intentionally or accidental by using improper security measures.

HIPAA has changed Healthcare Information in so many ways when it comes down to EDI. The system is designed to simplify electronic transactions and codes sets. The simplification of HIPAA was designed to show a consistency and operational improvements within the payer and the provider. In order to transfer healthcare information, it has to comply with the standards of HIPAA for that transaction.

So many things can be done to insure the safety of patients Electronic Health Records (EHR). In order to ensure their protection HIPAA has instituted the Privacy and Security Rules that pertain to the safeguard of the Administrative, Physical, and Technical aspect to a patients EHRs. This insures that your provider puts into place measurements that guard against any unauthorized use of a patients PHI.

(September 30, 2013) - The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published amended rules applicable to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 in January 2013. As explained by the Secretary of HHS, healthcare has experienced significant changes since HIPAA was enacted in 1996. The implementation of electronic medical records is just one of those changes. The new HIPAA regulations are designed to provide patients with better privacy protection, and additional rights not included in the original HIPAA rules. The new rules became effective on Sept. 23, 2013.

Unfortunately HIPAA violations happen every year in our country. In fact, a situation happened in a New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center on May 7th 2010. The HIPAA violation happened after the electronic health records of 6,800 patients ended up on Google for the world to see. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who are responsible for HIPAA enforcement laws deeply investigated this case. It was discovered that a Columbia University physician who developed applications for New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University, attempted to deactivate a personally owned computer server on the network containing electronic protected health information (ePHI). Due to lack of technical

When entering a patient 's room, remember to close the door behind. If the door is left open, people walking by the room could possibly over hear the conversation. This could lead to a potential violation of HIPAA.

If you work in healthcare, anywhere from a small medical office to a big hospital to an insurance company, you need to be in compliance with HIPAA. This is a long, complicated document and even big insurance companies struggle to keep the rules fresh in everyone 's mind and everyone on top of the most critical functions. Here are a few things to make sure you are doing right:

Health care includes preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, rehabilitative, maintenance, or palliative care, and counseling, services, assessment, or procedure with respect to the physical or mental condition, or functional status of an individual. Health Care Clearinghouse, Businesses that process or facilitate the processing of health information received form other businesses. It includes groups such as physician and hospital billing services. Health Plans, Individuals or group plans that provide or pay the cost of medical care and includes both Medicare and Medicaid programs. HIPAA protects an individual’s health information and their demographic information. This is called protected health information or PHI. Information meets the definition of PHI if, even without the patient’s name, if you look at certain information and you can tell who the person is then it is PHI. The PHI can relate to past, present or future physical or mental health of the individual. PHI describes a disease, diagnosis, procedure, prognosis, or condition of the individual and can exist in any medium files, voice mail, email, fax, or verbal communications. defines information as protected health information if it contains the following information about the patient, the patient’s household members, or the patient’s employers, Names, Dates relating to a patient, i.e. birth dates, dates of medical treatment, admission and discharge dates, and dates of death, Telephone numbers, addresses (including city, county, or zip code) fax numbers and other contact information, Social Security numbers, Medical records numbers, Photographs, Finger and voice prints, Any other unique identifying

Since HIPAA become mandatory on most of the health care organization, patient information is more secure compared to previous. Health care organization are investing huge amount of fund for safety measures to protect the patient information and i think this is the main concern in today's advanced health care

Other than HIPAA, Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is a major federal policy initiative that affects the healthcare information technology (HIT) in the past years. However, its policy is used to protect the EHR system from a security breach that can cause multi-million dollar fines to the company (Campus Safety Magazine, 2010). In 2009, President Obama signed HITECH Act as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with authority, so it can establish programs that will improve healthcare quality, safety, and efficiency using HIT (Hebda & Czar, 2013).

Current use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) has proven to be helpful for hospitals and independent medical practice to provide efficient care for patients. Balestra reports that using computers to maintain patient health records and care reduces errors, and advances in health information technology are saving lives and reducing cost (Balestra, 2017). As technology advances EHR are going to continue to be the main method of record keeping among medical providers. Therefore, staff and medical providers need to be trained on how to properly share patients EHR safely and in a secure form in order to maintain patient confidentiality. As records were shared electronically rules were implemented for clinicians to follow known as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule ,2013). These rules were implemented for clinicians to protect the