The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

[Name of the Institute]

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Introduction

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA for short) is the American law of 1996 for the health sector. HIPAA consists of two main parts. Title 1 aimed at protecting the right to insurance for loss or transfer of job. Title 2 aimed at regulating the transport and availability of medical information and prevents abuse and misuse of medical data (McKay, 2011). HIPAA for United States is probably the fact that abuse, fraud and civil sanctions are more important. In this paper I will analyze the article presented by Balezentis and Halterman. Their study highlights the importance of patient's privacy in healthcare.

Issues

The practice of medicine and health professions, both in medicine and the private institutionalized, is based on the doctor-patient relationship arising out of reciprocal rights and duties. The healthcare professional to provide a good and appropriate care must respect patients' rights or to comply with all its duties, which is often difficult because of our care. One of the most important concerns is the ethical issue concerning patient data privacy and protection is involved as discussed by Balezentis and Halterman in their article. In such cases, the privacy of governors and thousands of patients has been violated. This is a serious offense as per the HIPAA compliance requirements, which lead to, imprisonment and fine. Within the context of medico-legal and ethical practice of health professions, the history reaches its maximum size in the legal world because it is the document that reflects not only the medical practice or medical act. As well as the fulfillment of some major duties of health personnel regarding the patient: duty of care, duty to inform, etc., becoming the documentary evidence to assess the level of quality of care in circumstances of liability claims for healthcare professionals and / or public institutions (Balezentis, Halterman, 2002).

Privacy Policy

The covered entities are required to have a written privacy policy. This policy should include the measures that the company will take to safeguard the information of patients, the administration of PHI procedure for privacy and security pertaining to patient health information stored electronically. It is the responsibility of every covered entity to appoint or designate a privacy officer who will be looking after the privacy related affairs and resolve the complaints filed. Moreover, the covered entity should provide training to its employees so that they are aware of the compliance regulations under HIPAA. This written policy should be in accordance with the rules and regulations laid down in the HIPAA (Balezentis, Halterman, 2002).

The training should be provided to all the employees immediately after their recruitment. Not only this, the employees who have been trained previously should be provided refresher training on a periodic basis or when deemed necessary. Other than the privacy officer, the covered entity should designate or employ a contact person who is responsible disseminating information to patients and their loved ones on queries pertaining to patient health ...