Introduction The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, or HIPAA, is a law designed “to improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage in the group and individual markets, to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and health care delivery, to promote the use of medical savings accounts, to improve access to long-term care services and coverage, to simplify the administration of health insurance, and for other purposes.”1 HIPAA mandates that covered entities must employ technological means to ensure the privacy of sensitive information. This white paper intends to study the requirements put forth by HIPAA by examining what is technically necessary for them to be implemented, the technological feasibility of this, and what commercial, off-the-shelf systems are currently available to implement these requirements. HIPAA Overview On July 21, 1996, Bill Clinton signed HIPAA into law. It was passed partly because of the failure of congress to pass comprehensive health insurance legislation earlier in the decade. The general goals of HIPAA are to: * Increase number of employees who have health insurance; * Reduce health care fraud and abuse; * Introduce/implement administrative simplifications in order to augment effectiveness of health care in the US; * Protect the health information of individuals against access without consent or authorization; * Give patients more rights over their private data; * Set better boundaries for the use of medical information; * Hold people accountable for misuse; * Encourage administrative simplification (in the form of digitalization of information) to help reduce costs. HIPAA affects covered entities which are defined as: – Health plans; – Health care clearinghouses; – Health care providers who transmit health information in electronic form for certain standard transactions. Even though HIPAA was singed into law over seven years ago, its effects are mostly being felt now. This is because of its schedule of compliance: * 10/16/2002 - Transactions and code sets * 4/14/2003 – Privacy Rule * 4/14/2003 – Business Associates * 4/20/2005 – Security Rule This delay stems from a provision in the original act stating that if Congress did not specify certain regulations by the end of 1999, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had to do it. Congress did not meet its deadline, so HHS had to write up the regulations and give companies a chance to implement them.
In 1992, Christopher McCandless set off on an odyssey into the backcountry of Alaska, an adventure that had proved fatal. After McCandless's corpse was found, Jon Krakauer wrote an article on the story of Chris McCandless, which was released in the January 1993 issue of Outside magazine. The article had received a negative response; several readers criticized McCandless for being foolish and ill-prepared, and showed no sympathy or remorse for his death. McCandless has been referred to as a nut, a kook, and a fool. However, McCandless was not a nonsensical man. In 1996, Jon Krakauer's novel, Into the Wild, was published. The novel uncovers more detail of McCandless's story. Into the Wild rebuts the idea of McCandless being someone who is foolish, and speaks of the many occasions where McCandless has demonstrated great perseverance and determination. The novel also proves the intelligence of McCandless, and brings insight into McCandless's psyche. The following examples will illustrate how McCandless was not a fool, but someone to admire.
McCandless’s family and peers expect him to live life a certain way, to follow the family tradition, however, it is McCandless’s high social standards for himself, and his sharp view of right and wrong, that would define the blueprint of his tragic flaw that caused him to go into the wild. In High School, McCandless would start to show some of his radical ideas about how he could help fix society. McCandless’s high school buddies explained that “’ Chris didn’t like going through channels, working within the system.”’ (113) Instead, McCandless would often talk about leaving school to go South Africa to help end the apartheid. When his friends or adults responded by saying that you are only kids, or you can’t make a difference, McCandless would simply respond “so I guess you just don’t care about right and wrong ‘” (113). McCandless would grow to learn that hi...
Chris McCandless is regarded as being something as a spiritual figure almost as a cult hero, some call him a disillusioned fool, some call him a great adventurer, and the debate still continues. As Matthew Power calls in his article, an article where he tells the story of McCandless,“The debate falls into two camps: Krakauer's visionary seeker, the tragic hero who dared to live the unmediated life he had dreamed of and died trying; or, as many Alaskans see it, the unprepared fool, a greenhorn who had fundamentally misjudged the wilderness he'd wanted so desperately to commune with.” Like so many stories covering Christopher McCandless’ death, both ends of the argument are discussed in an unfavored manner in the hopes to help develop an opinion on the McCandless story. This open ended question can only be answered open-endedly based on what the readers base for themselves as covered stories intend. Like Power has done, ...
During the infancy of aviation no federal safety program existed. Some states passed legislation that required aircraft licensing and registration. Local governments passed ordinances that regulated flight operations and pilots. What this created was a patchwork of safety related requirements. In 1926 Congress passed the Air Commerce Act, which created the Department of Commerce. Historically the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dates from the Air Commerce Act of 1926. This was the first federal legislation of the government in aviation safety. The government finally realized that by regulating aviation a safer aviation industry could be attained. For example the Post Office suffered one fatality for 463,000 hours of flying versus non-regulated flying there was one fatality per 13,500 hours. As seen by regulating aviation safety is vastly increased.
Thus, reducing administrative work gives an opportunity to clinicians to spend more time with their patients. Through health informatics, some medical procedures can be automated, saving money for the health care budget. Research by Blumenthal and Tavenner (2010) states that, “The widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States is inevitable. EHRs will improve caregivers' decisions and patients' outcomes. Once patients experience the benefits of this technology, they will demand nothing less from their providers.
US Congress created the HIPAA bill in 1996 because of public concern about how their private information was being used. It is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which Congress created to protect confidentiality, privacy and security of patient information. It was also for health care documents to be passed electronically. HIPAA is a privacy rule, which gives patients control over their health information. Patients have to give permission any health care provider can disclose any information placed in the individual’s medical records. It helps limit protected health information (PHI) to minimize the chance of inappropriate disclosure. It establishes national-level standards that healthcare providers must comply with and strictly investigates compliance related issues while holding violators to civil or criminal penalties if they violate the privacy of a person’s PHI. HIPAA also has boundaries for using and disclosing health records by covered entities; a healthcare provider, health plan, and health care clearinghouse. It also supports the cause of disclosing PHI without a person’s consent for individual healthcare needs, public benefit and national interests. The portability part of HIPAA guarantees patient’s health insurance to employees after losing a job, making sure health insurance providers can’t discriminate against people because of health status or pre-existing condition, and keeps their files safe while being sent electronically. The Privacy Rule protects individual’s health information and requires medical providers to get consent for the release of any medical information and explain how private health records are protected. It also allows patients to receive their medical records from any...
Since the quality of healthcare would not suffer, the only thing to lose through maximizing efficiency is a bunch of waste. Through its administrative simplification advocacy, the American Medical Association (AMA) claims that up to 14% of a physician’s revenue is taken up by administrative waste. The goal of the administrative simplification is to inspire physician practices to use computerized, instantaneous health plan transactions, minimize manual procedures through the claims revenue cycle, while increasing transparency and reducing vagueness with the payment process involving the insurance company. It is the AMA’s hope to push this movement into high gear, getting more practices on board and to eventually see a decline in wasteful and inefficient administrative
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, most commonly known by its initials HIPAA, was enacted by Congress then signed by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996. This act was put into place in order to regulate the privacy of patient health information, and as an effort to lower the cost of health care, shape the many pieces of our complicated healthcare system. This act also protects individuals from losing their health insurance if they lose their employment or choose to switch employers. . Before HIPAA there was no standard or consistency for the enforcement of the privacy for patients and the rules and regulations varied by state and organizations. HIPAA virtually affects everybody within the healthcare field including but not limited to patients, providers, payers and intermediaries. Although there are many parts of the HIPAA act, for the purposes of this paper we are going to focus on the two main sections and the four objectives of HIPAA, a which are to improve the portability (the capability of transferring from one employee to another) of health insurance, combat fraud, abuse, and waste in health insurance, to promote the expanded use of medical savings accounts, and to simplify the administration of health insurance.
In 2010, President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act in order to bring reform to the current healthcare system. The law was designed to provide healthcare coverage for people that did not have access to healthcare, improve the quality of the types of healthcare provided, and contain costs (HHS, 2014). Some of the features of the law are:
The amount of money that is spent on healthcare is a quite a bit of money but about 10% of all the money is a result of some sort of medical fraud or abuse. This is about 120 billion dollars. With HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) medical fraud and abuse can be tracked easier. HIPAA was enacted in august of 1996; this was to help improve the portability and continuity of the health insurance.
Over the decades, art has been used as a weapon against the callousness of various social constructs - it has been used to challenge authority, to counter ideologies, to get a message across and to make a difference. In the same way, classical poetry and literature written by minds belonging to a different time, a different place and a different community have somehow found a way to transcend the boundaries set by time and space and have been carried through the ages to somehow seep into contemporary times and shape our society in ways we cannot fathom.
Administrative Mandates, including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, ICD-10 and HIPAA 5010, are all part of administrative simplification and the need for systems optimiza...
Health care reform is needed for four reasons. First, health care costs are rising. In 2011, the average cost for a family of four increased 7.3%, to $19,393. By 2030, payroll taxes will only cover 38% of Medicare costs. Second, health care reform is needed to improve the quality of care. Because of these reasons, President Barack Obama signed The Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, into law on March 23, 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court on June 28, 2012. The goal is to give more Americans access to affordable, quality health insurance, and to reduce the growth in health care spending in the U.S. The Affordable Care Act contains ten titles that span over 1000 pages, but most of its key provisions are in first Title; The first title is about 140 pages long. The purpose of the law if to expand the affordability, quality, and availability of private and public health insurance through consumer protections, taxes, insurance exchanges, and other reforms.
In education today, art studies are not often viewed as a priority for students and they very frequently get cut from school’s curriculum due to a lack of proper funding. Howeve...
Health care policies are plans that intended to determine or influence decisions or actions that will help to achieve specific health care goals. Most of these policies are actions taken by the government to improve the American health care system. The purpose of this essay is to describe the process of how a topic eventually becomes a policy and tie to how the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) policy process. This essay will include the formulation stage, legislative stage, and implementation stage of a complete policy process.