The past decade has encountered a strong push for medical providers across the United States to adapt to a universal electronic medical record system. Throughout this essay, we will discuss the effect of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act on the privacy of patient electronic medical records. This article discusses the failures and successes of HIPAA, including the strong and weak points of the legislation. Lastly, we will discuss more recent attempts at achieving a national system of electronic medical records, and recent attempts to strengthen privacy.
Introduction The quickly developing field of information technology has brought about many changes to medical records in the 21st century. In this short time frame, we have encountered a technological revolution in the medical industry. This revolution strongly revolves around the formation of electronic medical records. Because of these electronic medical records, personal health records quickly became available to many strangers working in health care, business associates and the insurance industry, placing privacy of medical records on the line. In order to standardize and protect consumer privacy rights in electronic medical records, the government passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 to help regulate the industry. HIPAA established a series of standards for electronic transfers of personal data and several legislative laws to protect the medical privacy of consumers. Although HIPAA established many benefits in the industry, its shortcomings also became an issue in our exponentially growing technological state. This essay will establish these benefits and shortcomings, and take an in depth look at how the recent revisions to HIPAA in the Stimulus Plan of 2009 play out.
Electronic Medical Records For the past decade the
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