The healthcare sector’s handling of personal health information has indeed been guided by two important pieces of legislation, HIPAA and HITECH. While HIPAA provides federal guidelines for safeguarding individual health information, HITECH promotes creating and efficiently using healthcare data. This essay will compare and contrast these two legislations, highlighting their distinctions and similarities.
Contrasts
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was formed in 1996; its primary goal was to safeguard the safety and privacy of people’s personal health information (PHI) (Edemekong et al., 2018). In addition to setting sanctions for non-compliance, it creates a set of federal guidelines for PHI protection. Furthermore, it grants people specific rights relating to their PHI, for instance, the ability to access and obtain a copy of their medical information.
Contrarily, HITECH, passed in 2009 as a component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aims to encourage the broad adoption and effective use of electronic health records (EHRs) among healthcare providers (Burde, 2011). While HITECH is primarily concerned with encouraging the use of EHRs, it also contains several requirements to ensure the security and confidentiality of PHI. For instance, HITECH stipulates that companies receiving HITECH financing must adhere to Privacy and security requirements. It also enables the Office for Civil Rights to enforce HIPAA more strictly (Mennemeyer et al., 2015).
Comparisons
The scope of their respective jurisdiction serves as one of the primary distinctions between HITECH and HIPAA. Health plans, clearinghouses, and some healthcare professionals are just a few of the many organizations to whom HIPAA applies (Rosenbloom, 2019). In contrast, HITECH regulations also implement by the critical stakeholders of covered entities that generate, obtain, sustain, or transmit electronic PHI on their behalf. Conversely, HITECH primarily applies to healthcare providers who have adopted certified EHR technology and seek incentive payments.
The two laws’ approaches to security and privacy issues are another significant distinction between them. The main goals of HIPAA are to establish requirements for preserving PHI and to give persons specific rights about their PHI (Keshta & Odeh, 2020). While HITECH also includes safeguards to safeguard the security and privacy of PHI, its primary goal is to encourage the widespread adoption and good use of EHRs.
Despite these variations, there are some significant similarities between HIPAA and HITECH. Both regulati Health Insurance Portability ons mandate specific steps by organizations to safeguard the security and privacy of PHI (McGraw & Mandl, 2021). They are aimed at enhancing the quality and efficacy of healthcare by encouraging the use of technology. In addition, both laws are administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). While HIPAA lays out the framework for protecting PHI, HITECH Act focuses specifically on PHI in the context of EHRs and other health IT.
In conclusion, HIPAA and HITECH are both crucial pieces of legislation that will significantly impact how personal health information (PHI) is handled and protected in the US. HIPAA was primarily concerned with safeguarding PHI’s privacy and security. In contrast, HITECH prioritizes fostering the widespread adoption and meaningful use of EHRs while simultaneously including safeguards for PHI’s privacy and security. Both regulations encourage the use of technology and offer fines for non-compliance, but each has unique features.
References
Burde, H. (2011). THE HITECH ACT—An Overview. (2011). AMA Journal of Ethics, 13(3), 172–175. https://doi.org/10.1001/virtualmentor.2011.13.3.hlaw1-1103
Edemekong, P. F., Annamaraju, P., & Haydel, M. J. (2018). Health insurance portability and accountability act. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500019/
Keshta, I., & Odeh, A. (2020). Security and privacy of electronic health records: Concerns and challenges. Egyptian Informatics Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eij.2020.07.003
McGraw, D., & Mandl, K. D. (2021). Privacy protections to encourage use of health-relevant digital data in a learning health system. npj Digital Medicine, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-020-00362-8
Mennemeyer, S. T., Menachemi, N., Rahurkar, S., & Ford, E. W. (2015). Impact of the HITECH Act on physicians’ adoption of electronic health records. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 23(2), 375–379. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocv103
Rosenbloom, S. T., Smith, J. R. L., Bowen, R., Burns, J., Riplinger, L., & Payne, T. H. (2019). Updating HIPAA for the electronic medical record era. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 26(10), 1115–1119. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocz090
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