The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a federal law that was enacted in 1996. Its purpose is to protect the privacy of individuals' health information and to provide portability of health insurance coverage.

HIPAA has several components:

The Privacy Rule: This rule establishes national standards for protecting the privacy of individuals' health information, known as protected health information (PHI). It regulates how covered entities, such as health plans, healthcare providers, and healthcare clearinghouses, can use and disclose PHI.
The Security Rule: This rule establishes national standards for protecting the security of electronic PHI (ePHI). It requires covered entities to implement administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of ePHI.
The Transactions and Code Sets Rule: This rule establishes national standards for electronic healthcare transactions and code sets, such as claims and encounter information.
The Unique Identifiers Rule: This rule assigns unique identifiers to healthcare providers and health plans, in order to facilitate the efficient and accurate electronic exchange of healthcare information.
The Enforcement Rule: This rule establishes procedures for enforcing the HIPAA rules and for imposing penalties for violations.

HIPAA is enforced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and private individuals can file complaint for violation of the act. The law has been amended over the years, most notably with the HITECH Act of 2009 and the ACA of 2010, to address new technologies and to expand the scope of the law to cover new entities and new types of information.

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