Established in 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) have the mandate of protecting the confidentiality and security of healthcare information and promoting the accessibility of health care services. The parties responsible for protecting and securing patient information include healthcare plans, healthcare providers, and healthcare clearinghouses. The parties concerned have the obligation to take care of the information they receive in the process of providing healthcare services. The legislation ensures health-care plans are easily available to the public. It also makes the plans easily portable and renewable.
HIPAA covers electronic medical record organizations, students, health plans, persons employed healthcare facilities, billing companies, and non-patient care employees. The privacy rule provides guidelines on the use and disclosure of health information. The security rule provides the measures that concerned parties must undertake to protect health information ( Cohen & Mello, 2018) . The breach notification rule provides the guidelines on the reporting non-compliance or unsecured health information. Information that HIPAA protects includes, name and identity of the patient, present, past, and future health conditions, care provided, and payment information ( Gostin et al., 2009) . The law lays out the administrative requirements that covered entities must have such as a privacy official. It outlines the procedure and permission for use and disclosure of patient health information.
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Title I
The section encompasses health insurance reforms about employer-provided plans. The section supplements the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The section eliminates the limitations of group health coverage based on pre-existing conditions. The law adds credible coverage for the group and individual plans. Next, an individual can enjoy health insurance coverage even after moving to another job. The law allows individuals to get insurance in different locations without having to engage the open enrollment window. The law permits individuals to participate in coverage so long as they satisfy criteria. The legislation enables people to get cover for pre-existing situations so long as they meet the set rules. The law compels insurance service providers to eliminate exclusion when issuing policies to the people leaving group health plans with credible coverage of more than one and a half years.
Title II
The section elongates on the need to make proper use of technology as far as the use of health information records is concerned. Since technology had overwhelmed the existing laws, HIPAA came in to ensure that there is care handling patient information security and privacy. Title II compels organizations to implement national standards in handling electronic healthcare information ( Cohen & Mello, 2018) . The law requires the processing of transactions using the standard electronic format. It provides guidelines on the unique identifier standards that health providers use. Thirdly, the section outlines the security standards that health entities are required to comply with. The healthcare entities also have the responsibility to protect their electronic systems. The next component of Title II is the privacy rule. The law accords healthcare service providers with the mandate of protecting patient information and only allows access under authorization. The law also gives patients the power to decide on the fate of their information.
Title III, IV, and V
Title III of HIPAA addresses provisions that relate to tax and the directives regarding medical care. The law advocates for the standardization of contributions that individuals save or the deductions in a pre-medical savings account ( Gostin et al., 2009) . The law also availed medical savings account for employees who are self-employed and those from small employers. Title IV deals with described reforms in healthcare insurance which further clarifies individuals seeking continued coverage and those with pre-existing conditions. The law also adjusts the COBRA. Title V deals with the treatment of individuals who lose US citizenship in relation in relation to taxing. The section also includes the tax deductions on life insurance loans apart from eliminating the rule to interest allocation.
Who Regulates HIPAA?
The government has the responsibility to regulate health services throughout the country. Therefore, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has the mandate of implementing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. As the government agent of healthcare services, HHS requires all healthcare entities to comply with the components of the legislation ( Wu et al., 2012) . Before HIPAA, there were no standard security and privacy concerns with regards to the management of health information. HHS holds healthcare service entities accountable and requires them to be compliant with the HIPAA regulations or face the penalties.
Significance of HIPAA Health Care Organizations
The legislation serves great importance to the public and health care organizations need to comply. First, the privacy rule ensures that healthcare entities uphold privacy procedures to protect patient health information ( Wu et al., 2012) . It limits the use and disclosure of patient health information ( Cohen & Mello, 2018) . The security rule outlines the methods, standards, and processes with regards to storage access, and the use of patient health information. HIPAA provides the transaction rule that standardizes the handling of health records for security, safety, and accuracy. Next, there is the identifier rule that standardizes the identification of patients, individuals, and health entities.
Conclusion
Established in 1996, the health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has been a crucial driver of effective health service delivery. The legislation has five main sections each describing specific provisions on healthcare. The key areas that the law covers are the privacy rule, security rule, transaction rule, identifiers rule, an enforcement rule. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has the mandate of overseeing the implementation of HIPAA and requires healthcare entities to comply. Non-compliance attracts penalties.
References
Cohen, I. G., & Mello, M. M. (2018). HIPAA and protecting health information in the 21st century. Jama , 320 (3), 231-232.
Gostin, L. O., Levit, L. A., & Nass, S. J. (Eds.). (2009). Beyond the HIPAA privacy rule: enhancing privacy, improving health through research . National Academies Press.
Wu, R., Ahn, G. J., & Hu, H. (2012, January). Towards HIPAA-compliant healthcare systems. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium (pp. 593-602).
