Week 3: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Week 3: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Week 3: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. A lot of people think of HIPPA as simple a law that prevents healthcare workers from talking about patient medical history, but this law offers so much more. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is federal law that required the creation of national standards to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without the patients consent or knowledge (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 2018).

HIPAA became a law on August 21,1996 by president Bill Clinton. Although, there have been major updates to the HIPPA legislation over the year. Some examples of the updates is the introduction to HIPAA privacy rule, the Omnibus Rule, the HIPAA security rule, and incorporation of HITECH act requirements. The HIPAA security rule established national standards for security to protect electronic protected health information. The privacy rule defined PHI (protected health information) and regulated the use if it such as whom the information could be disclosed to and under what circumstances. Lastly, that HITECH Act required covered entities to notify individuals when PHI is compromised or exposed.

The main goals of HIPAA were to make it easier for people to keep health insurance when they were between jobs, protect the confidentiality and security of healthcare information, and also help the healthcare industry control administrative costs. HIPAA protects patients by prohibiting certain uses and disclose of health information. For example, if you’re treated in the emergency room by a college friend according to the HIPAA law it would illegal for them to discuss your visit with a mutual friend.

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You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.