Healthcare Law

Jennifer Spooner

Aspen University

DBPN8 – Foundations of Nursing Practice

Professor Debra Pendergast

March 1, 2021
Healthcare Law

• federal and state administered

• deals with issues related to the United States health care system

• covers a variety of legal subjects

• mental health

• health reform

• health insurance

• patient protection

• affordable health care

• emergency health care

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Created to protect patient information

• August 1996 – HIPAA Signed into Law by President Bill Clinton.

• April 2003 – Effective Date of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

• April 2005 – Effective Date of the HIPAA Security Rule.

• March 2006 – Effective Date of the HIPAA Breach Enforcement Rule.

• September 2009 – Effective date of HITECH and the Breach Notification

Rule.

• March 2013 – Effective Date of the Final Omnibus Rule.

(HIPAA Journal, 2020)

 Why HIPAA was created

• To provide better access to health care insurance

• To Prevent Health Care Fraud.

• To promote more standardization and efficiency

 HIPAA was created due to:

Electronic Medical Records were thought to be better at keeping health

information and less errors

Doctors bad handwriting was hard to read and caused confusion

Employees were having issues keeping their medical insurance

Needed to instill rules and regulation for a data breach or violation

Employees not being trained properly or lack of training

Lacking organization

Records not being stored or disposed of properly

Those who supported HIPAA

• President Bill Clinton signed the legislation into a law

• US Department of Health and Human Service

• The house

• The senate

These were all involved with HIPAA going into effect

 Issues with getting HIPAA law passed

Privacy requirements were not specified.

These requirements needed to include:

How our personal information was going to be protected.

What the procedure is in order to protect this information.

How this information was used and to who.

disclosures of information that should be authorized or required under

HIPAA.

Who to disclose to or what information needed authorization.

(AHIC, 2007)
 HIPPA privacy rule and being a nurse

Notifying patients about their privacy rights and how their information can be used.

Adopting and implementing privacy procedures.

Training employees so that they understand the privacy procedures. 

Designating an individual to be responsible for seeing that the privacy procedures are adopted and
followed.

Securing patient records containing individually identifiable health information.

Addressing breaches in access to and/or use of protected health information.

 HIPAA and being a nurse

HIPAA provides guidelines for how nurses must protect

the privacy of patients’ information.

Nurses must understand and be compliant.

Compliance is a requirement of the nurses job.

There can be significant fines and penalties for

violations of HIPAA regulations.
The issues that arise with the HIPAA Privacy Rule and
nursing practice involve nurses not properly identifying
protected health information.

Most of the questions and concerns arise when nurses are

not sure of when and to who they can give information.

Nurses are not responsible for installation, maintenance,

etc., of the administrative, physical and technical safeguards
used.

They are constantly transmitting and receiving written and

electronic information about their patients, which needs to
be done in a safe and effective manor.
Physical safeguards used to protect health information
must be understood and used correctly by a nurse.

Doing so is relatively simple and involves:

(1)information transmission

(2) computer workstation security

(3) disposal of protected health information

 A computer screen should never be made visible to anyone not
involved with patient care.

 The nurse should always “hide” a computer screen that has

patient information on it if the nurse must interrupt data entry.

 Nurses should never share their password with anyone.

 Nurses should log off when finished with the computer.

 References

AHIC (American Health Information Community), 2007. Confidentiality,

privacy, and security workgroup, summary of the 14th web conference.

http://137​.187.25.8/healthit​/ahic/materials​/summary/cpssum_100407

Creasia, J. & Friberg, E. (2016). Conceptual Foundations: The Bridge to

Professional Nursing Practice (6th ed.). Mosby.

HIPAA Journal. (2020, May 19). HIPAA History.

https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-history/