Although
the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was first
passed into law by Congress in 1996, many are just learning about the
massive scope of the legislation and the many organizations that have
obligations under this law, even those who are not healthcare providers,
hospitals, or health plans.
HIPAA is
the first federal law to address health privacy in a comprehensive way.
HIPAA can be separated into three general areas: electronic transactions,
privacy, and security. At this time, only the regulations related to the
electronic transactions and privacy areas have been finalized.
The HIPAA
Privacy Rule covers all identifiable information or personal health information
(PHI) about a patient that is transferred to or maintained by a healthcare
provider, including e-mail, electronic, fax, paper, oral, and voice mail
records, as well as phone conversations. HIPAA rules protect the information
itself, not the record in which the information appears. In other words,
information does not lose its protection simply because it is stored in
or printed from a computer.
Even at this
late date, much confusion exists in all industries regarding compliance
requirements, who must comply, and who need not worry about compliance.
Most healthcare organizations must comply with HIPAA's Privacy Rule by
April 14, 2003, but many other organizations, including a large number
of employers, also will be affected by this rule. In fact, HIPAA’s
Privacy Rule will impact, at least indirectly, all organizations in some
way.
Therefore,
records and information management (RIM) professionals must know what
the HIPAA Privacy Rule entails and be prepared to comply with its rules
and regulations. Even if an organization is not a healthcare-related
organization and does not have to comply with HIPAA, it still should implement
a privacy policy and actions for handling information correctly and protecting
it from inappropriate use.
»Learn
more about HIPAA and about records management solutions that enable compliance
by contacting Image Data for a Document Management
Assessment.
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