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
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in the year 1996. As a broad Congressional attempt at healthcare reform HIPAA was first introduced into Congress as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Bill named after two of its leading sponsors. The law has several different purposes that mainly focus on the protection of the healthcare provider and their patient depending on the circumstances and situations that may typically occur in a medical environment.
The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act also known as HIPAA has set a national standard for the handling of electronically stored medical records. Medical confidentiality protects conversations between a patient and his or her doctor from being used against the patient in court. It is a part of the rules of evidence in many common law jurisdictions. The penalties for violating HIPPA are based on the level of negligence and can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation or per record, with a maximum of $1.5 million per year. Violations can also carry criminal charges that can result in jail time. Henrietta had no privacy or control over what her doctors were saying or doing with her and her cells. Henrietta was treated as an experiment and her information was not even close to confidential. “A miserable specimen. The doctors saw her as something to experiment on, not as a person or human
HIPAA requires providers to have policies and procedures that are in place that protect the patients security, privacy and confidentiality.
(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.
It is now week two of interning back at this endoscopy center. I don’t consider this week two but just a continuation. I experienced myself violating HIPPA. I could not believe that I was very carless with a patient’s electronic health record. I was dealing with two different patients side by side when they were laying down after they had gotten their endoscopy procedure done. They were resting a little after the medication and I had the computer on wheels moving around. This computer on wheels abbreviated, as ‘cow’ is very beneficial to the doctors since they move it with them, as they are moving around in the office. However, this computer on wheels was left on with a patients record and I was turned around to assist the next one. I was being observed when I am in this section of the center. The doctor that was observing did not tell me that I was violating HIPPA until after. He told me that I should be more careful. I could not believe myself that I did such a thing as
When examining the case of the State of California against Dr Huping Zhou, we can conclude that the HIPAA law is a meaningful law set in place to protect patients’ privacy, and any one violating this law, regardless of your position in the health care field can be persecuted, punished for violating the law, even in the absence damages evidence resulting from the violation of the law. The purpose of this post is to discuss the case of the State of California against the physician, Dr Huping Zhou. In this post, I will review the HIPAA law, the penalties for violation of the law and why I feel that Doctor Zhou was very fortunate to receve the punishments four months in prison and just $2000 in fine.
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
HIPAA is short for health insurance portability and accountability act of 1996. They have many requirement that’s a medical assistant could have and use to become a better assistant. They have many requirements that the policy requires covered encounters by taking reasonable steps: covered entry to develop and implement policies for its own organization. Reflecting the business practices and work force.
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
Organizational managers are the ones who plan, organize, lead, and control what resources they have. On top of all of that, they are also responsible for enacting HIPAA into their day to day routine. HIPAA is clearly a huge deal, so the employees must understand what it is and what it entails so they do not turn out like Jamie Knapp. First off, the manager must teach employees about how to secure medical records. Not only do records need to be kept from people outside the workplace, but also from employees that aren’t authorized to see the information. The Small Business Chronicle states that “employees who handle health-related information must also maintain a log that details any release or transfer of information” (Symes, 2016). Obviously the records need to be kept in a safe place. If they are paper files, they should be kept in a filing cabinet which requires a key. If they are saved electronically, there needs to be a password in order to access the files. There needs to be a password to the computer workstation, but also a password that is used to access just the health information. A manager in the health industry needs to give training to all new employees about the company’s policies, rules, and regulation, but the employees also need training on HIPAA’s policies. If you don’t give proper training, and the employee discloses information, “you may be found liable for the disclosure and may then be sued by
Nurses and doctors take the oath to protect the privacy and the confidentiality of patients. Patients and their medical conditions should not be discussed with anyone who is not treating the patient. Electronic health records are held to the same standards as nurses in that information is to be kept between, and shared only with the immediate care team. HIPAA violations are not taken lightly nor are the violation fines cheap. Depending on the violation, a hospital can be fined from $100 to $50,000 per violation (National Nurse 2011 p 23). The person who violated HIPAA faces termination, revocation of license and/or jail time depending on the severity of the
Technology has become an essential part of our everyday life therefore, it makes sense that doctors and hospitals get rid of the old fashioned paper charting and use technology to access patient records. Electronic health records (EHR) provide quick access to information, as doctors no longer have to wait for other providers to fax previous records to them. The accessibility of Electronic Health Records assist medical providers to make quick medical care decisions, by accessing previous care provided to patients including treatment and diagnosis. Quick access to information through EHR enables health care providers to treat patients faster as there is no need for records to be mailed or