Boothe J F
Office of Holland & Knight LLP, Washington, DC, USA.
Clin Leadersh Manag Rev. 2000 Nov-Dec;14(6):301-5.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act included substantial changes involving handling of health information by establishing national standards for electronic transactions, data privacy, and data security. The first final rule for electronic transaction standards was published August 17, 2000. The remaining final rules are expected to be published in Winter 2000. Providers, such as clinical laboratories, will have 26 months from the data of publication to comply. The civil monetary fines for noncompliance are substantial. This article will review the key provisions of the data security and data privacy proposed rules. These provisions will touch virtually every aspect of electronic claims submissions, electronic data transactions, and the electronic storage of medical information. The proposed rules will require a coordinated approach by providers to develop the policies and procedures, and the technical and physical infrastructure to protect health information. Moreover, providers will need to identify a privacy officer, to review existing privacy policies to compare the proposed rule with any existing state laws to determine which may be more stringent, and to develop new policies to address the particular requirements of the final rule.
《健康保险流通与责任法案》带来了重大变革，通过确立电子交易、数据隐私和数据安全的国家标准，对健康信息的处理方式进行了规范。电子交易标准的首个最终规则于2000年8月17日发布。其余最终规则预计将于2000年冬季发布。临床实验室等医疗服务提供者自发布之日起有26个月的时间来遵守规定。对违规行为的民事罚款数额巨大。本文将回顾数据安全和数据隐私拟议规则的关键条款。这些条款几乎会涉及电子索赔提交、电子数据交易以及医疗信息电子存储的方方面面。拟议规则将要求医疗服务提供者采取协调一致的方法来制定政策和程序，以及保护健康信息所需的技术和物理基础设施。此外，医疗服务提供者需要指定一名隐私官，审查现有的隐私政策，将拟议规则与任何现行州法律进行比较，以确定哪一项可能更为严格，并制定新的政策以满足最终规则的特定要求。
