It is a federal law enacted in 1996 as an attempt at incremental medical care reform and experts consider it to be the most significant health care legislation since Medicare in 1965.
HIPAA's intent is to reform the medical sector by reducing costs, simplifying administrative procedures and burdens, and improving privacy and safety of patient's information. how does hipaa compliance effect technology
There are two different and distinct legislation which fall under the HIPAA umbrella: HIPAA Privacy and HIPAA Security. HIPAA Privacy relates to the protection and privacy of individuals' protected health information (PHI) while HIPAA safety is related to the privacy and protection of all individuals' protected health information in electronic form (ePHI). HIPAA Privacy is what most of us think about when we hear the expression HIPAA ( HIPAA Awareness Training, Notice of Privacy Practices, Authorization forms, etc )whereas HIPAA Security will be more the focus of a company's IT department because it copes with encryption, digital security, disaster recovery, etc..
Do you need to worry about HIPAA? Covered Entities are those kinds of organizations/individuals that deal directly with secure health information and include healthcare providers, medical insurance providers, what technology is hipaa compliant and company sponsored group health plans. Anyone out of these categories is considered a business partner. Business partners include medical billing companies, medical storage, advertising organizations, software providers, medical device manufacturers, etc..