HIPAA tied to universal health insurance initiative
HIPAA tied to universal health insurance initiative
More provisions to be released
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has its roots in former President Bill Clinton’s proposed universal health care plan. When that proposal failed, Congress passed HIPAA, also known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act and originally a piece of legislation intended to make it easier for people to move their health insurance from one employer to another.
"Instead of just making sure that health insurance was portable and that people couldn’t be denied coverage for existing conditions when they changed jobs, Congress took it as an opportunity to look at the health care market as a whole," says Janice Cunningham, a health care attorney with The Health Care Group, a Plymouth Meeting, PA-based consulting firm. A major issue was the paucity of rules on the books about privacy, security, and confidentiality, or who had access to the information, how it could be shared, and what patient consent was needed.
Congress decided that the health insurance portability issue needed to be addressed immediately and passed the law, with a provision giving Congress until Aug. 21, 1999, to pass comprehensive legislation on protecting privacy and ensuring confidentiality of electronically stored medical information.
The act stipulated that if Congress failed to act by the deadline, the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) would create regulations that standardize all electronic data interchange of health information and protect the security of electronic medical records.
Since then, the HHS has released proposed regulations in increments. The "Transactions and Code Sets" final rule, published by the HHS on Aug. 16, 2000, provides standards for electronic transactions and code sets that health care providers and payers use to identify diagnoses, drugs, and procedures. When the rule goes into effect, all providers will use — and all health plans must accept — the same electronic transaction standards. The privacy and security standards were first released in late October 1999 with a 60-day comment period. The final regulations originally were scheduled to be published by Feb. 21, 2000.
Outpouring of comments caused delay
However, HHS received so many comments from the public — more than 52,000 — that the final regulation was postponed over and over. The original HIPAA privacy rules, signed into law by President Clinton during the final days of his administration, were scheduled to go into effect Feb. 28, 2001, with full implementation due by Feb. 29, 2003. But because of a technicality, the Bush administration halted implementation for further review.
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson announced in April that he is allowing the HIPAA implementation to move forward without substantial changes, but he added that some of the original rules might be modified as the administration issues guidelines on how the rule should be implemented.
HIPPAA resources
• Janice Cunningham, The Health Care Group, Plymouth Meeting, PA. Telephone: (610) 828-3888, ext. 3327. Web site: www.thehealthcaregroup.com.
• David Kibbe, Canopy Systems, Chapel Hill, NC. Web site: www.canopycentral.com.
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Web site: www.hhs.gov.
• American Hospital Association. Web site: www.aha.org/hipaa/hipaa_home.asp.
• American Health Information Management Association. Web site: www.ahima.org.
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