A Survey of U.S. Laws for Health Information Security & Privacy

Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act Of 1996 (Hipaa)

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act seeks to achieve two goals. First, it has provisions that help improve efficiency of healthcare delivery in the United States. Second, it promulgates provisions for increasing the number of Americans with health insurance coverage. Among other main provisions of HIPAA, this article keeps its focus on the Administrative Simplification provision. This provision standardizes the use of electronic health information and mandates the development of security standards and safeguards for the use of electronic health information. It also stipulates privacy standards for the Protected Health Information (PHI) (Nass, Levit, & Gostin, 2009).