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Originally Posted by billethkid
HIPPA a good example of penalizing the majority to correct the few that had or will have issues.
HIPPA a significant waste of time and money and gets in the way of what the real people need everyday. Millions and millions of pounds of paper.....millions and billions of $$$.......special interest lawmakers directed overkill.
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There are many good parts about a law that protects the privacy of my health records, among other things.
Increased awareness. HIPAA has certainly made clinicians more sensitive to their responsibility to protect patients’ medical information.
Streamlined insurance claim system. In what will likely be HIPAA’s most important immediate improvement, it simplifies interactions between health-care providers and the insurance industry. HIPAA has promulgated 10 National Standards for Electronic Data Interchange for the transmission of health-care information. These include standards for eligibility and response times, referral certification and authorization, claims and encounter information, payment and remittance advice, and claims status.
As a result, HIPAA provides 1 standard form for submitting claims—compared to the 400 different insurance claim forms in use previously. This change, at least, will likely save administrative work in doctors’ offices.
Privacy assurance adapted to the electronic age. Of course, the issue of privacy itself cannot be overlooked. HIPAA’s security and privacy provisions are necessary to help safeguard health information housed on computers and accessed through the Internet.
When medical records are stored and transmitted in electronic form, the risk for unauthorized access is higher than with paper records. The “low-tech” nature of medical records handwritten by physicians ensured a measure of privacy. Such records are largely illegible and often cannot be clearly interpreted, even by other doctors, and are therefore of inconsistent utility. The need to physically find and photocopy handwritten records stored in locked file cabinets poses another deterrent. Health information that is neatly typed and saved to a central computer server offers much greater potential for access by hackers and other evildoers.