The Health Information Privacy and Portability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Law deals with maintaining privacy while handling and sharing medical records with unauthorized clients. The law aims at protecting health records under established medical standards. Despite the protection aspect, the law also ensures the flow of health patients’ information to provide and maintain relevant health quality and to safeguard public health and their welfare. The HIPAA privacy law is a vital regulation in the health field, and all health professionals should observe it strictly.
Who is Covered
The HIPAA Privacy law covers the following parties. Health plans that entail people or parties that pay or provide medical care cost. Health care providers who share information via electronic health records systems. Healthcare clearinghouses that receive standardized health information under special conditions. They may work including billing services, state health funds institutions and repricing companies. Other may include business entities that in one way or another may receive confidential health information for specific purposes such as insurance bodies due to clients claims and compensation. For data analysis or even research use ("Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule," 2019) The terms of coverage are controlled by the law and work through the regulations guidance while handling health records and information.
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Privacy
The core goal of HIPAA Privacy law is privacy. It ensures the appropriate privacy in health records and information. The privacy maintenance while the health care providers are sharing and transferring information from one person to another. Especially while distributing the data to external parties who are considered unauthorized cannot hence access the health records (Bernard,). The confidentiality of health records is of utmost importance as it preserves personal privacy of health details available in the information. It is against the health law for health professionals to expose their patient's information to outside parties unless with the patient permission.
Information Protected
A variety of health records information HIPAA Privacy Law protects a variety of health records information. The information protected involve “Individually identifiable health information.” The individual information entails demographic contents of the person. For instance, past or present mental and physical health information, past and present medical expenses paid by a person due to the provision of health care, and means of health care providers and the individual has undergone within a given duration of time. The information may be transmitted by the covered entities through any form of media, orally, print or electronic. The identifiers recorded in this information are, date of birth, name, gender, age, NHIF number, the name of the patient's location, and address ("Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule," 2019). The information in these records are exposable under legal health records jurisdiction.
Purposes
The HIPAA Privacy Law was established and implemented with a drive to aid the flow and preservation of health records and information. It provides the minimum amount of information that should be shareable with other external parties. However, the main purpose for the law was to assist in personal maintenance of health insurance entities coverage. It was set to simplify health administrative processes and systematic flow of procedures. Also, it was to control medical costs charged to patients. Too many parties involved in the health field led to the creation of this law to facilitate effective operations in the health industry. The Law aims at simplification of patients’ documentation and control of confidentiality (Araujo, 2018). The sharing of sensitive health records and information should be under minimized and authorized measures.With the HIPAA Act, the change for health care industry came to be. It led to modification of practices of sharing health records and information. It implementation protected and maintained privacy in the health field.
References
Araujo, M. (2018). Protecting Your Medical Data - How HIPAA and the Privacy Rule Work. Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/hipaa-law-and-medical-privacy-2645657
Bernard, R. (2015). How to Be a Rock Star Doctor: The Complete Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Life and Your Profession . New Jersey: Book Bay.
Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-regulations/index.html
