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Summary

This report provides a brief overview of the recently modified medical privacy rule, "Standards for the Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information"("privacy rule") published on August 14, 2002 by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Issuance of the modified privacy rule by the Bush Administration is the culmination of a decades long debate over access to medical records that has pitted privacy advocates and civil libertarians against employers and much of the health care industry. As required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"), privacy recommendations were made to Congress by HHS in 1997, and a privacy rule was issued by the Clinton Administration in December 2000. The privacy rule went into effect April 14, 2001, with compliance required by April 2003 for most entities. The regulation creates a new federal floor of privacy protections while leaving in place more protective state rules or practices. The rule establishes a set of basic consumer protections and a series of regulatory permissions for uses and disclosures of protected health information.

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