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Summary

On March 27, 2002 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published its proposed changes to the medical privacy regulations issued by the Clinton Administration under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"). HHS is accepting comments on the proposed changes until April 26, 2002. This report provides an overview of the final rule for "Standards for the Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information" ( "privacy rule") that went into effect on April 14, 2001, and an overview of the Bush Administration's proposed changes to the privacy regulation. Many of the proposed changes address problems identified by HHS in its guidance on the privacy rule issued July 2001. However, the proposed rule also contains a number of revisions that were not identified in the July 2001 guidance. Some changes are more significant than others. HIPAA expressly permits the HHS Secretary to modify any of its required standards, such as the privacy standard, after the first year, once every 12 months. There is no target date for the publication of the final rule, but it must be published by October 13, 2001 to meet the requirement that covered entities have 180 days to incorporate changes. The compliance deadline is April 2003. For detailed discussion of medical privacy issues, see CRS Report RL30620, Health Information Security and Privacy: HIPAA and Proposed Implementing Regulations. On December 28, 2000, shortly before the Clinton Administration left office, HHS published the final rule on health information privacy, as required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).1 HIPAA was created to improve the portability and continuity of health insurance coverage, to combat waste, fraud and abuse in health care, to promote the use of medical savings accounts, to improve access to long term care, and to simplify the administration of health insurance.2 Sections 261 through 264 of HIPAA are known as the administrative simplification provisions. The general administrative simplification rule requires health care payers and providers who transmit transactions electronically to use standardized data elements to conduct financial and administrative transactions. Section 262 directs HHS to issue standards to facilitate the

Related Legislation:
• S.261

Related Reports:
• RS20934

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