A new law, known as “HIPAA” (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), requires that we establish new policies and procedures to ensure patient confidentiality and the security of patient information.  Preparing for HIPAA will benefit both you as individual employees as well as the institution's compliance with federal regulations.  There are nine parts to HIPAA.  Our immediate compliance will focus on the Privacy and Security Rules.  

The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disbursement of individually identifiable health information and gives individuals the right to determine and restrict access to their health information.  Compliance with HIPAA’s privacy regulations became required on April 14, 2003.  There are substantial penalties, both civil and criminal, for non-compliance. 

The HIPAA Security Rule requires that reasonable and appropriate technical, physical, and administrative safeguards be taken with electronic individually identifiable health information.  Specifically, we must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all electronic protected health information we create, receive, maintain or transmit. Compliance with the Security Rule is required by April 21, 2005.

A helpful summary of this Act can be found at http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp and at http://www.cms.gov/hipaa by clicking on the “HIPAA Administrative Simplification” link.  The texts of the Privacy and Security Rules may be found at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/.

HIPAA will impact the Health Sciences campuses in various ways.  Patient records (including shadow records), human subjects research records, and marketing demographics that contain health information are a few examples of the ways in which we will fall under HIPAA’s regulation.  Responsibility for HIPAA compliance is being coordinated by Vice Chancellor John Sladek and Esther Henry, HIPAA Project Manager and Privacy Officer for the Health Sciences Center, assisted by a designated HIPAA Security Officer, Sherry Fischer, and a committee of select members of the HSC community.  For additional information or assistance, please contact the HIPAA Compliance Office