Hipaa

Many individuals simply think of HIPAA as the act which has helped them retain patient privacy, though HIPAA does much more than just protect patients' health records. HIPAA helped build a trust between doctors and patients, as there was a creation of confidentiality. Once HIPAA was passed into legislation, many medical professionals felt that too much protection could cause barriers and hinder medical advancements (Goldman, 1998). HIPAA also contains information that helps provide detailed standards of practice for maintaining privacy and lists the possible courses of actions if one violates HIPAA (Benefield, 2006).

HIPAA has a total of five titles and five objectives in order to "provide a cost-effective way to administer and provide continuous health insurance coverage for millions of Americans" (Prince, pg. 45). HIPAA's five objectives are (1) regulatory compliance; (2) business performance improvement; (3) customer relationship improvement; (4) clinical outcome improvement; and (5) privacy, confidentiality and security maintenance of health care information (Prince, 2000). These five objectives are conquered through the five titles, which are (I) health care access, portability and renewability; (II) health care fraud and abuse prevention; (III) tax related health provisions; (IV) group health plans; and (V) revenue offsets (Prince, 2000). For the purpose of this literature review, HIPAA will refer to objectives I and II.

For those who work with medical information, HIPAA requires that courses and training on HIPAA and its requirements be documented (Benefield et. al.) For those who break any HIPAA objective, they can face criminal or civil penalties, which can involve imprisonment for as long as a year and/or fines of up to $50,000 (Cheng, 2006). HIPAA also does not discriminate against how information is transmitted, as all forms of communication are covered by HIPAA (Chesney, 2001).

Key Features with HIPAA

There are several