Protecting Patient Information

Everyone has heard about Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA and the regulations that go with the subject. The regulations are designed to safeguard electronic protected health information (ePHI). For those Healthy Diet Tips if you that work with computers understand how easy it is to have information available for eyes to see while your screen is up and open. This covers this likes information stored on your hard drive or CDs or file servers.
Even though the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted by congress in 1996, when the technology took off it was realized quickly that something more had to be done to protect patient information. The security regulations came into effect in the beginning of 2005. This was also when there was a big push on electronic handheld devices.
Privacy has become such a big issue that you will hear things like identity theft and laptops being stolen even shredded paper being taped together to get someone’s social security number. Anything we can do to protect ourselves we do. The first step for anyone is to get HIPAA training. This way you know what is and isn’t protected health information. Plus, you learn who and what information you can give out and they provide examples that make it easy for you to understand and see the difference.
The biggest thing to remember is the fact that we are not as free to give out information as we use to be and “Mom” does not want everyone to know why she is in the hospital. “Uncle Joe” wants to keep it himself that there is a personal problem and little Jimmy does not want his friends to know that he might be in counseling. Thinking back, these things were part of our restaurant conversation and now we talk about the latest technology and how to keep up with it.
It feels good to know that when I am going to the doctors that I am not the office conversation if I have something weird going on. Before it used to be that everyone would come see Health News In Hindi the problem and make their recommendations and comments. Our children will have more privacy with HIPAA and with HIPAA training they will appreciate what has been done for them.