Legislations in HIPAA
In 1996, the US congress enforced the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA. This law has brought about a lot of changes in the field of administration of health care as well as the management of information systems in health care. This act is actually a federal law and amendments have been made according to the Internal revenue code of 1986 which helps in providing portability as well as continuity of health insurance, reducing the amount of fraud as well as abuse of the health insurance as well as the health care industry, encouraging the use of medical savings accounts and also providing people with access to good quality as well as long term health care. This law also tries to simplify the process of medical insurance.
HIPAA has been created in order to create some standards in the method of exchange of information regarding patients and also trying to prevent any unwanted revealing of the private medical information regarding patients. This is relevant to medical information which is either available in the form of paper or in the electronic format. According to HIPAA, all healthcare organizations should adhere to certain specific rules and norms. An administrative simplification title should be provided in order to avoid any kind of health care abuse and fraud. This title will include many laws and standards, which pertain to Electronic Health Transactions Standards, Privacy & Confidentiality Standards, Unique Health Identifiers, and Security & Electronic Signature Standards.
The laws and standards, which are found in HIPAA, are applicable to all companies and organizations, which are, involved in the field of health care like health care plans, public and private payers, health care insurers, HMOs, Medicare, Medicaid, group health plans, health care clearinghouses, all people and organizations which are involved in the processing of non-standard formatted health information and prepare it according to the right standards, health care providers, people who are involved in the electronic transmission of health information, people who receive medical information about people, people who are involved in the maintenance of the electronic transmission of medical information.
When an organization does not abide by the rules and regulations of HIPAA, the everyday activities of the organization will get disturbed. They also might have to incur some costs due to this. The most sever results of not abiding by the rules of HIPAA include not being able to conduct your business smoothly as well as the loss of a major chunk of business. Some sanctions will also be imposed by the government on such companies. The fine, which will have to be paid for not following the rules, and regulations, which come under HIPAA, include $100 for each person and for every violation and this can be increased until $25000 in a year. When medical information regarding the patient has been disclosed with the complete knowledge of the organization, then a fine of $50000 can be imposed for every violation and this can also include imprisonment and a fine of $250000 can be imposed along with a ten year imprisonment if the intention behind revealing the information has been to make to make use of the information for some commercial purposes.
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