HIPAA Blog

[ Tuesday, March 17, 2009 ]

 

The Stimulus Bill's HIPAA provisions. OK, you've heard about this Stimulus Bill. The one nobody read. Well, I finally read it (or at least the parts dealing with HIPAA), and we rolled those comments into other health industry comments for what we at JW like to call an eBrief (longer than an eAlert, shorter than a HealthBrief article), which should be on the JW website tomorrow (included in our "Opportunities in Economic Crisis" task force feature). But to give you a few early bites at the apple, here's the lede:

In an apparent attempt to stimulate HIPAA lawyers, Congress included in the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“ARRA”), known as the Economic Stimulus Package, provisions to revise and increase the scope of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), the primary federal statute governing the privacy of an individual’s health information. The primary impact is to increase the number of parties subject to HIPAA; specify when and how HIPAA-covered entities deal with data breaches; and increase the types of activities that can result in a civil or criminal penalty, the people who can be charged with a violation, and the governmental entities that can prosecute a violation of HIPAA.

More specifics to come.

Jeff [5:00 PM]

Comments: Post a Comment
http://www.blogger.com/template-edit.g?blogID=3380636 Blogger: HIPAA Blog - Edit your Template