What is the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA)?

What does HIPAA mean for your school?
HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed in 1996 to address concerns about several issues, such as health insurance portability and continuity; fraud, waste and abuse in health care insurance and delivery; and medical savings accounts.

One section of the law is geared specifically towards the simplification of our national health care system's administration. To accomplish this, HIPAA stipulates standards and requirements for the electronic transmission of certain health information.

Standards have/will be set for electronic transactions and code sets, national health care provider identifiers, national employer identifiers, security and electronic signatures, and the privacy of protected health information. Eventually, standards will be provided for health plan identifiers, individual identifiers, claims attachment transactions and first report of injury transactions.