Who Is Affected by HIPAA?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) protects the privacy of individuals' identifiable health information. This act also regulates national standards for the production of electronic health records. It's important that patients, whose information is being protected, and covered entities, the organizations that must protect the privacy, understand HIPAA regulations.

What Is Pprotected

• HIPAA regulations protect the privacy of information regarding your medical care. This includes any information entered into your medical records and any conversations you have with medical professionals including doctors, nurses and other care providers. Information included in your medical providers billing system and any information held by your health insurance company is also protected under HIPAA.

Covered Entities

• Most health care providers including doctors, hospitals, clinics, dentists and pharmacies are required to have policies in place to keep your information private. Organizations that process payment for medical services, such as health insurance companies and HMOs and Medicare, Medicaid and other governmental health services are also bound by HIPAA to keep information private.

Why Is This Important

• According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, HIPAA helped to create a national standard for the access and protection of medical information. HIPAA now guarantees patients the right to review and make changes to their medical records. Patients also have more control over how doctors communicate with them. For example, these regulations give patients the right to require a doctor to use only the requested phone number to communicate about medical information or to specify which mailing address should be used for medical billing. All of these safeguards help patients keep medical information confidential.