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The Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act

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It has always been the job of health care providers to maintain doctor-patient confidentiality. Not only is it a legal obligation it is also an ethical obligation to many doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants and many other medical staff. Until recently medical records were primarily recorded on paper and stored in cabinets and locked in what was believed as a secure room. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act also known as HIPAA, was passed on August 21, 1996. Although the law was passed in 1996 it did not become effective until April 14, 2003. This was due to the fact that “Given that Congress did not act to produce these within the timeframe specified by the law the secretary at the Department of Health and Human …show more content…

These objectives were followed through with three main provisions of the Act: (1) the portability provisions, (2) the administrative simplification provisions, and (3) tax provisions
As implied by the name, the HIPAA portability provision is intended to improve the portability of health coverage for people who are in the process of changing jobs and also make it easier to add family members to an employees’ coverage. HIPAA portability applies not only to group health plans but also to issuers of group health plans. So both the employer and the insurer are obligated to comply. Part of the HIPAA portability provision is issuing a Certificate of Creditable Coverage (COCC). The COCC must specify the date that any waiting period began as well as the dates that coverage under the plan began and ended. Educational information has been placed on the back of the COCC explaining HIPAA rights. COCC will be issued by certain insurance companies, such as the Physicians Health Plan of North Indiana, Inc, if; regular coverage is lost, COBRA coverage is lost, when a COCC is requested by a member while still active; and within two years after losing coverage. However, after termination of coverage, if a member is moving to different health plan that has a pre-existing condition exclusion (PCE), the timeframe revealed on the COCC can be used to decrease the PCE period by one day for every day of creditable coverage listed on the

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