Posted: January 23rd, 2023

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Essay

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Essay

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act  (HIPAA)

The Health Insurance and Accountability Act (HIPAA), started operating in the year 1996, where it ensured the health of patient was provided with health facilities that would help them recover from their diagnosis without them knowing. According to HHS.gov (n,d), it was invented by the federal law, to ensure that there is creation of the national  standards for the protection of the sensitive patients, most especially those who are not in a position to support themselves, or sometimes no relatives who could help them overcome their diagnosis. The Health and Human Services (HHS), which the Department of the United States invented, issued out the HIPAA privacy rule so that HIPAA could be able to generate its requirements and be independent Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Essay.

Different scholarly studies have dissect that the HIPAA provision of safe harbor is linked with the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The HIPAA Privacy Rule has its own limitations, one of the most essential limitation is that it discloses Protected Health Information (PHI) Compliancy Group (2020). The HIPAA safe harbor rule is the rule that identifies protected health information that have already been identified. The HIPAA Privacy Rule is a rule that protects diagnosis of an individual that can be identified. The rule involves performing some diagnosis, then letter on provides relevant information which are transmitted through an entity that is covered, or its business associates, in various different forms such as; oral, paper, electronic or media. This information that is transmitted, is referred as the Protected Health Information (PHI).

The Individually Identifiable Health Information is an information that provides the demographic data that is linked to: the past, present and future mental or physical health of a patient, providing health care to the diagnosed patient, or the past present or future payment for the provision of health care to the patient. HIPAA Safe Harbor De – identification is the process that involves the removal of specific patient identifier, the relatives of the patient, employers and or the members of the household. The HIPAA Safe Harbor De – identification requirements process was to become satisfying if the specific identifiers had been removed. The moment the information of the protected health has been De – identified, the result is no longer known as the PHI Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Essay.

According to Sweeney, Loo and Brody (2017), there are some of the specific information that has to be De – identified with regards to HIPAA Safe Harbor Provision. This specific information include; specified data elements which can consequently be used to  identify a patient uniquely. The pieces of data that can be used to identify an individual uniquely include; geographic locators, names, the date elements that are related to the patient except the year, cellphone, telephone and fax numbers, email, IP addresses – this may be useful when identifying physical addresses, social security numbers, numbers of the medical record, among others.

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Finally, it is important to state that the HIPAA Safe Harbor De – identification is usually carried out for the purpose of De – identifying certain PHI. Once these elements of data have been De – identified, they are no longer known as the PHI. This means that they can now be used to perform other different diagnosis such as studies that are competitive or certain types of research which could be relevant in providing medical information Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Essay.

References.

HHS.gov (n,d). Summery of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/security/laws-regulations/index.html

Compliancy Group (2020). What is the HIPAA Safe Harbor Provision? Retrieved from https://compliancy-group.com/what-is-the-hipaa-safe-harbor-provision/#:~:te

Sweeney, L., Too, J. & Brody, G. (2017). Re – identification Risks in HIPAA Safe Harbor Data: A Study of Data from one Environmental Health Study. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6344041/

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Essay