Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA)

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 protects the privacy of individually identifiable health information, sets national standards for the security of electronic protected health information, and protects identifiable information that is used to analyze patient safety events and improve patient safety.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for personal health information held by covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information, but allows that the disclosure of personal health information needed for patient care and other important purposes. HIPPA’s Security Rule specifies a series of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for covered entities to use to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information.

The Office for Civil Rights enforces HIPAA.