Hipaa Lawyers
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What is HIPAA?
What exactly is HIPAA? What does it do? I keep trying to research it on the internet but all I keep finding is in depth “lawyer talk” complicated explanations. Can somebody break it down for me? Also does HIPAA affect the patients access to his or hers medical records? Thankyou everyone.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
The patient has a right to review or have copies of his or her own medical records as the long as the patient is legally an adult and has not been found legally incompetant (and has a legal guardian).
However, this right can be restricted in certain situation. For example, a mentally ill person might be disturbed by seeing his records. The clinician may need to determine if it is appropriate for the patient to have access to his records.
In a nutshell, HIPAA assures that the PHI (protected health information) will be used appropriately for medical treatment, to pay for the treatment, in some cases it may be released for insurance and research purposes.
This information should not be disclosed for inappropriate reasons such as wanting to discredit someone, gossip about them, etc.
However, medical records can be released per court order if they are pertinent to a specific legal proceeding.
Actually, HIPAA isn’t that big of a deal. It doesn’t really change very much that wasn’t already in place to protect medical record confidentiality. It just organized the laws in a slightly different way and some things are little more clear cut than they used to be. For example, HIPAA is more clear about how much someone should be fined or sentenced if they released health information illegally.
The only part of HIPAA I can think is that is really new is the part where people can request changes in their medical records. I don’t recall there being a law like that in the past.
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