– HIPAA is the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. There are two sections to the Act. HIPAA Title I deals with protecting health insurance coverage for people who lose or change jobs. HIPAA Title II includes an administrative simplification section which deals with the standardization of healthcare-related information systems. In the information technology industries, this section is what most people mean when they refer to HIPAA. HIPAA establishes mandatory regulations that require extensive changes to the way that health providers conduct business. Basically it is the law that says that in medica fields patients records must be kept private.

Theoretically the hippa standards were put in place to try to be fair to all parties involved so the reason it was developed was more than just the medical staff rights. . Patient #1, relatives and families, medial staff, medical providers are some of the more important parties considered. Whether the list of rights etc in hippa is working very well is debatable and may cause more injustices in some cases. But in fairness this is a very complicated and involved set of issues that any list of rights and responsibilities probably won’t adequately address all the issues. At least we can say it is an attempt to try to be fair and address the fact that outlandish unfairness or even crimes can be committed in the implimentation of medical treatment. Nobody is really covered by anything other than understanding, trying to do the right thing, and a few drops of love by all involved to try to do the best to the patients within the framework fairness to all other parties involved. Hippa probably needs periodic review to see where it needs to be improved.

What it means is if you are in the hospital and you don’t sign the right paperwork nobody in your family nor your friends can inquire on your health status. Its a stupid rule and has caused more problems than its worth.

Some people are secretive about medical problems so much so they want nobody to know about them.. this covers them. But we had a friend who’s wife entered the hospital when he was out of state and it took 3 days before she was ‘found’. We had dropped her off there and my husband had to threaten to call the police because her car was in their parking lot and they said she was not there. It was a mass of confusion!!

I called my local hospital and told them to send me whatever paperwork to make sure that my condition and location was never a secret to anyone I could care less who knows!

Check with your local hospital for the paperwork to recind that rule when it comes to your hospitalization.

seriously it is an agency to help with medical expenses