HIPAA
HIPAA Electronic Data Interchange is based upon a provision that was passed into effect to ensure that patients records were protected and private when transferred via EDI electronically or via the Web. The basic tenants of the privacy provision of the HIPAA deal with patients’ rights to access records regarding their health and their health history. It also denotes that if a patient’s information is going to be used that they be informed of when, where and what for. However, HIPAA also allows for covered entities such as hospitals, doctors, doctor’s offices and any other covered medical group entities to use a person’s information without their permission if it is for the purpose of relaying information about their treatment to another medical office or doctor and also for attempting to capture payment for services rendered. The rules and regulations set forth by HIPAA are essentially designed to protect the rights of individual patients especially where EDI is concerned due to the very intimate nature of the information — the act even requires medical offices to specially train their staff on the proper use of EDI when submitting a patient’s documents and records to another office or any other entity.
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