HIPAA?

  The next time you're in the doctor's office filling out form after form, you can thank HIPAA for some of them.  It stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the first part of it does just what the title says, protect health insurance coverage when someone loses or changes jobs.  The second part has to do with the setting up of national standards for the sharing of medical information between medical professionals as well as with insurance companies.



   

 HIPAA has four health information standards.  The first has to do with computerized information exchange.  The second standardized something called identifiers for the health care providers.  The third required implementation of security standards for electronic information and the fourth made the majority of an individual's health information private.
   

HIPAA is meant to protect the identity and privacy of healthcare clients and the way medical information is shared and discussed. This has required quite a bit of training and some additional cost for medical professionals.  The areas most impacted are healthcare providers and their privacy policies for their patients personal data.