HIPPA

Every time someone or a member of their family sees a physician, are admitted to the hospital, purchase prescriptions, or send in a health insurance claim a record of their personal, confidential, health information is made. Most people never worry about the privacy of their personal health records in the past, feeling confident that their medical records were safely tucked away in their doctor’s filing cabinets never to be revealed to anyone else. However today, with so many conflicting state laws about patient privacy, there is an urgent need for federal standards to protect their privacy and confidentially as patients. There needs to be national standards that will control who sees personal health records and establish real penalties for those who misuse or disclose information without patient consent.
On December 20, 2000 Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced the country’s first ever standards for protecting the privacy of American’s personal health records. The new regulation protects medical records and other personal health information that is maintained by health care providers, hospitals, health plans, health insurances providers, and health care clearinghouses. The new regulation protects all Americans regardless of where they live, or where they receive their healthcare. It insures the protection of the most private personal information, health records. Today’s rapidly growing technology and the Internet provide ways that patient information is accessed and exchanged in lightening speed. According to Secretary Shalala these standards will allow Americans to feel confident that personal health information will be protected.
The new standards, mandated by Congress when it failed to pass comprehensive privacy legislation, provide several important rights to assure the privacy of patient health records including limiting the nonconsensual use and release of private health information. It gives patients new rights to access...