Hippa

HIPAA

The medical field has always been improving and vastly changing to better meet the needs of the patients, medical professionals, and insurance providers. In 1996, the Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act was presented to make immense amounts of changes that would affect not only the patients, but the providers and even the workplace itself. HIPAA was a huge movement in securing patients’ rights to privacy, the ability to access their own medical records in an easier manner, and also to make claim forms universal for easier handling between practices. The deadline for facilities to have the mandates in place as stated was April 14, 2003. (Frank-Stromborg & Ganschow, 2002)

Some of the new regulations that were going to be put into place directly affected the healthcare consumers or patients. This act was put into place to ensure that patients had the ability to view their health information and make doing so much easier. Going hand in hand with this new regulation, patients were also given the ability to limit that disclosure of health information to anyone besides themselves. This was a very important part of this act, and it gave the people the freedom to access their records and the ability to make sure others could not view that information. (Kibbe, 2001)

Another aspect that the HIPAA includes is that in which affects the workplace and the privacy of their patients. The Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act puts into account a lot of regulations that will protect the privacy of the patients in the facilities in which they seek medical attention. Some of those regulations are strict and these changes include files and charts must be kept out of view at nurses’ stations, patients’ names aren’t allowed to be posted on their room door, staff are required to take the necessary precautions that ensure x-rays cannot be viewed by the public, and filing cabinets along with their records must be in secure locations...