Term Papers on You Say Hippo, I Say HIPAA

Term Paper Title	You Say Hippo, I Say HIPAA
# of Words	752
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.01

You Say Hippo, I say HIPAA

NICC College Comp II

18 Feb. 2004

     You may say to yourself “Self, what on Earth is this crazy girl talking about hippos for?”  In all seriousness, HIPAA, short for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 is a new law that protects your healthcare privacy, as well as mine.  The formal wording states that it is to “amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage in the group and individual markets, to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in health insurance and health care delivery, to promote the use of medical savings accounts, to improve access to long-term services and coverage, to simplify the administration of health insurance, and for other purposes.”

     What does this all mean, you ask.  Frankly, HIPAA was a huge piece of legislation that was intended to fix many problems within the health care and health insurance fields.  It was also put in place to ensure the portability of health insurance, simplify the administration of health insurance coverage, and standardize electronic transactions between health care providers and insurance companies.  This is also the law that requires insurers to cover patients with pre-existing conditions.

     HIPAA began with good intent.  From the beginning people were coming forward with horror stories of how their privacy had been violated or how employees had been discriminated against because of expensive medical conditions.  Patients were having their names sold to marketing and pharmaceutical companies by their physicians without their permission.  No one would argue the medical information should be protected and fortunately the Privacy Rule considers the size and type of facility when determining what level of security is needed to provide adequate protection.

     When HIPAA was first introduced to the business office employees, including myself, at Medical Associates rumors were flying constantly about the extreme lengths we would have to go to in order to be “HIPAA compliant”.  Would we have to soundproof everything?  Lock all the drawers to our desk?  Would we even be able to say a patient’s name anymore?  Fortunately it isn’t as extreme as health care workers feared.  You can still call a p...

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