It is very important as members of the Nassau County Medical community hospital to understand what HIPPA is all about how it operates, how it can have a tremendous effect on us as healthcare providers in many ways. The “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was passed in 1996” by “congress to ensure the protection and privacy” of the patient health information, weathers it’s in a clinic, a hospital, nursing facility, or even a dermatologist office. The main focus of HIPPA (1996) is to make sure that patient information is protected while being shared by mail, phone, or electronically (Tower, Johnson Andrew). HIPPA was enacted by the United States congress, at the time our President Bill Clinton signed the bill in August 21, 1996. This means that it was enacted by the federal government. The “healthcare insurance companies and the providers are to adhere to the HIPPA regulation guidelines.” The HIPPA law is a multi-step approach that is geared to improve the health insurance system. One approach of the HIPPA regulations is to protect the privacy of the patient information (Sage, Bobbie 2015).
There is information that as health care providers we need to know how to protect our patient rights and ourselves as the providers. HIPPA implemented the rights concerning “Protected Health Information” (PHI) which is a privacy rule that establishes and protects individual “medical records and other health information. It applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses.” “The rule requires safeguards to protect the privacy of personal health information, and sets limits and conditions on the uses and disclosures that maybe made of such information without patient authorization.” “The rule gives patients the right over their health information