| HIPAA
is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 enacted
as Public Law 104-191 and represents the most significant health care
legislation in
U.S.
history. In addition to addressing insurability of pre-existing conditions
and the continuation of health insurance coverage for individuals changing
employers or employment status, congress also utilized this law to
substantially reform inefficiencies in our health care system and provide
uniform standards for handling medical records. In short, anyone who
provides health care services or handles medical records, will be impacted.
The full HIPAA law text is available at: http://cms.hhs.gov
The
majority of impacts affecting health care providers are set forth in Title
II, Subtitle F of the law entitled "Administrative
Simplification". Although the Administrative Simplification code
consumes only 16 of the 169 page law, references are made to sizable
implementation standards as well as several standard setting organizations (SSOs)
responsibile for actually defining and publishing specific requirements. The
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is nearing completion of
about 1000 pages of related regulations, standards, and implementation
guidance incrementally published in the Federal Register. You can obtain all
HIPAA Administrative Simplification related material published by DHHS at: http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/admnsimp/.
Published standards originating from the SSOs are available at their
respective websites.
Because
every health care provider practice is unique, all guidelines from the
government only define what needs to be accomplished and fall back to the
medical industry and private sector to decide how procedurally. Specific
steps to compliance are also expected to vary widely based on the diverse
state of systems and procedures providers use to collect, store, maintain,
transmit, and/or report medical records and billing information
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