Overview of HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a complex piece of legislation that affects the total healthcare delivery system. In other words, HIPAA is a set rule to protect the health related electronic information. The effect of HIPAA rules is generally applied to all types of health care organizations and support services. According to HIPAA, all the health care organizations and support services should maintain necessary security measures to protect personal health information.

Medical institutes and support services should prepare and store health information of the patients in digital format. Based on the requirement, these digital reports are exchanged from one system to another over the Internet. HIPAA Act ensures complete security of digital health information, which includes – secure storage system and secure transmission of digital information over the Internet. Under the Portability portion of the HIPAA Act, designed to protect Americans, who had preexisting health conditions, from losing their health insurance when they changed jobs. On the other hand, the Administrative Simplification Portion of the HIPAA Act was designed to streamline and simplify the health care payment system through the adoption of standards for transmitting electronic health care claims. More specifically, the HIPAA Administrative Simplification calls for:

• Standardization of electronic, administrative and financial data of patient.
• Unique health identifiers for employers, individuals, health plans and health care providers.
• Privacy and security standards protecting the confidentiality and integrity of individually identifiable health information of the patient whether it may be past, present or future.