Posts Tagged ‘HIPAA II’
United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is HIPAA and includes HIPAA I and HIPAA II. HIPAA I deals with health insurance rules related to people who have lost or changed their jobs. The HIPAA II is to develop a standard process that needs to be adhered to by the health providers. HIPAA II is most important and popular and sets the rules for safeguarding patient health data. This helps to safeguard the patients and the health insurance organisations from the malpractices because of fake identity.
HIPAA is implementing strict rules and regulations to deal with health insurance related malpractices like the sale of important health data of patients to lawyers to earn money. Recently action has been taken with the aim to make sharing of people’s electronic health records.
In the month of November 2009, 8 federal agencies sanctioned a notice approval form. This form makes compulsory for the health agencies to reveal to the customers the procedure through which their data is obtained and disbursed. This helps the customer to take an effective decision to avail or reject the service.
The new rule empowers the government to initiate legal proceedings against the defaulter for not adhering to HIPAA compliance, taking criminal action and levying hefty fines.
The last rule of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in accordance with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act makes it compulsory for the health agencies to inform any violation of patient health record to the customer. The media should be informed if there is breach of 500 or more patient health data. The rule also specifies the time, matter and procedure of conveying the breach.
The Recovery act makes it compulsory for HHS or Department of Health and Human Services to carry out a research on the stakeholders that dispense health services but are not under the umbrella of the HIPAA. The intent is to draw up norms on how such parties can dispense their healthcare services simultaneously safeguarding important patient information.
Ultimately, newer and more stringent rules point towards the exercises of the regulatory bodies to put an end to malpractices that are inherent to the process despite security measures that are in place. The only intention is to ensure the electronic sharing of confidential health records safe and resistant to tampering. This will plug the losses that the state and the people incur on account of fraudulent claims.