A Small Acronym with a Big Bang

[Robinette]

HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountablity Act of 1996.

I keep hearing about "Hippa" and decided to find out what the heck it is.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was passed in 1996, and covers different aspects of health care portability and privacy.

Title I protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. This portability helps eliminate "job lock." Provisions guarantee availability and renewability of health insurance , and employers or carriers cannot discriminate based on health status.

Title II requirements include national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, clearinghouses, health plans and employers. . It also addresses the security and privacy of health data. Providers and employers are now scrambling to meet deadlines on the relatively new privacy requirements.

One of the requirements is that a patient chart cannot be left anywhere where someone other than a health professional can see it. This includes stacks of charts sitting at the Nurses Station rather than in their appropriate filing slots.

It also includes not having a patient's name on their hospital door, or writing a patients name down in your cheat-sheet that you use to keep track of what patient is in what room and what they all need for your shift.

There can be NO way a patient's name or health data can be seen by anyone but you.

Eenteresting!

[sjoe]

"It also includes ...writing a patients name down in your cheat-sheet that you use to keep track of what patient is in what room and what they all need for your shift."

Rubbish.

[Robinette]

"It also includes ...writing a patients name down in your cheat-sheet that you use to keep track of what patient is in what room and what they all need for your shift."

Rubbish.

Not really. It is in fact true.