The Privacy Rule, called HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), gives the patient strong rights over his or her information, and it requires healthcare entities to rearrange their ways of communicating and establishing efficient privacy controls. It provides laws to protect workers who leave their jobs from losing their ability to be covered by health insurance (portability), and to protect the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of electronic health information (accountability). HIPAA's requirements are meant to encourage healthcare organizations to move patient information handling activities from manual to electronic systems in order to improve security, lower costs, and lower the error rate. There are four main parts of this drug regulation: rule, implem

The rules also identify cases in which the DHHS will be limited in carrying out these penalties. These instances include cases where criminal penalties are applied and the person using reasonable diligence did not know HIPAA was violated, or the compliance violation was due to reasonable cause and corrected within 30 days. The DHHS may also reduce or waive penalties in regard to the violation. There is a six-year statute of limitations on imposing the penalties.

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has released short-term final rules on Civil Money Penalties that may be forced for violations of HIPAA Administrative Simplification rules. President Bush approved the regulations on April 12, 2001. The official effective date of the regulations is April 14, 2001. Covered entities, including hospitals and physicians, have two years to comply (by April 14, 2003). Small health plans have until April 14, 2004 to comply.

PHI (personal health information) can also be given to a correctional institution when necessary for the patient’s health or the safety of others. To avert a serious threat to health or safety; to victims of abuse, neglect, or domestic violence; to military and veteran command authorities; and protected services for the President and others are all necessary to disclose the personal health information of a patient.

One portion of HIPAA contains the Administrative Simplification Provision. The Administrative Simplification Provision applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers who transmit health information electronically. These are all called covered entities in the Administration Simplifications regulations.

The history up to the current status of the regulations of HIPAA required an in-depth and lengthy process to finalize each set of rules in order for it to reach a consensus of the final rule before it became a federal law.

Enforcement of a compliance regulat

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