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- Est. of HIPAA
- More Info
Each time a patient sees a doctor, is admitted to a hospital, goes to a pharmacist or sends a claim to a health plan, a record is made of their confidential health information.
- For many years, the confidentiality of this health information was maintained by our doctors and kept sealed in file cabinets and not revealed to anyone.
- Currently, the use and disclosure of this information is protected by numerous state laws, leaving gaps in the protection of patients' privacy and confidentiality, thus creating a need for national standards to control the flow of sensitive patient information and to establish penalties for the misuse or disclosure of this information.
President Clinton and Congress recognized the need for national patient record privacy standards in 1996 when they enacted HIPAA in 1996. This law gave Congress until August 21, 1999, to pass comprehensive health privacy legislation. After three years of discussion in Congress without passage of such a law, HIPAA provided DHHS with the authority to devise such privacy protections by regulation.
- This final rule provides the first comprehensive federal protection for the privacy of health information. However, because of the limitations of the HIPAA statute, these protections do not fully achieve the Administration's goal of a seamless system of privacy protection for all health information.
- Department of Health and Human Services' Fact Sheet: PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF PATIENTS' HEALTH INFORMATION: SUMMARY OF THE FINAL REGULATION
