A new modification to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) took effect on March 26, 2013 with compliance by all effected parties required by September 23, 2013.  The modifications are sweeping and all nurses should be aware of these changes for their practice, whether they are LNC’s, management, or clinical nurses.

The entire rule change is vast but some of the key points that I found to be the most important are as follows:

• When data is compromised a data breach will be presumed.  This may affect insurance companies and private entities investigating health or injury-related claims.
• If a patient pays out-of-pocket for a treatment they can request that this treatment not be reported to their health plan.  These types of things will need to be taken into consideration when looking into what tests a patient may have had for a case.  One would need to tell the attorney client that the patient needs to verbally tell them all of the tests in case there is any that are not part of the health plans records.
• Patients are entitled to a copy of their electronic medical record.

Once the rule takes effect attorneys and LNC’s should have found a way to work within the system.

I personally take HIPPA very seriously.  I do not keep any patient files on my hard drive.  At the end of the day everything is locked up on flash drives.  I use Sharefile to send files to attorney clients.  I myself had my medical records violated and it was not a good experience.  So for me I will go the extra mile in my practice to see that all patient files are protected.