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3 Things You Should Know About HIPPA If You Are In The Medical Niche

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3 Things You Should Know About HIPPA If You Are In The Medical Niche

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed by the U.S. Congress in the year 1996. However, the act was not implemented until the year 2003. HIPPA was enacted with an aim to improve the security and efficiency of health care systems and to help employees and their families to maintain or renew their medical insurance coverage when their job ends or they are in-between jobs. HIPPA law is applicable to "covered entities" only. According to HIPPA rules "covered entities" are defined as health care providers, health plans and health care clearing houses, who are involved directly or indirectly in electronically transferring of health information.

3 Things You Should Know About HIPPA If You Are In The Medical Niche

Therefore if you are in medical coverage business, given below are three primary HIPPA specifications that you and your employees must be aware of.

1. HIPPA was enforced with an intention to protect employees privacy by confidentially maintaining individual's health information. Hence in the first place, it becomes essential to understand what kind of information needs to be protected. According to HIPPA regulations, any health-related information about employees and not just restricted to medical conditions and diagnoses, should be kept with utmost privacy. This also includes prescriptions, medical treatments, information included under the new genetic privacy law (GINA law), psychiatric and health insurance information.

2. Next you need to familiarize your employees about their duties. For this, you can give them HIPPA Training or ask them to take a HIPPA Certification course. This will help you and your employees to understand what kind of protection is and not included under HIPPA. Following this, form privacy procedures in your company regarding employee medical records that should include the place and way of storing medical personnel files. It is important to present comprehensive information concerning how and when your business and concerned medical providers will be permitted to use and access medical information retained in private employee files.

3. "Covered entities" are responsible for maintaining the privacy of employee's health records. Any violation under this record will make you liable to face serious legal accusations. Hence you must undertake extra care while storing and transferring health information. It is best to separately store medical records and other protected data from general personnel records. Additionally, special employee health data files should be placed under authorized access and must be transmitted securely.