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TechKnowSurge Catalog Videos Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
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Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

HIPAA is a U.S. federal law enacted in 1996 that establishes privacy and security standards for protecting patient health records held by healthcare providers. It defines patient rights, data transmission rules, enforcement mechanisms, and breach notification requirements.

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About this video

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, is a U.S. federal law enacted in 1996 to establish national standards for protecting the privacy and security of patient health information. It applies broadly to healthcare providers, insurers, and related entities that handle patient records within the United States, making compliance a foundational requirement across the healthcare industry. HIPAA defines the rules governing how protected health information is stored, accessed, and transmitted, including standards for electronic claims and data exchange. The law also establishes a defined set of patient rights, giving individuals the ability to access and obtain copies of their medical records, submit requests for amendments to that information, and authorize the transfer of their records from one provider to another. While amendment requests are not guaranteed to be approved, the right to make them is protected under the law. Enforcement of HIPAA is carried out through a structured regulatory framework that includes financial penalties for non-compliance, scaled according to the severity and nature of the violation. Organizations are also required to follow breach notification protocols when protected health information is suspected of being improperly accessed or disclosed, ensuring that affected patients and relevant authorities are notified in a timely manner. Together, these provisions make HIPAA a critical compliance standard for any organization operating within the U.S. healthcare sector.

What you'll learn

What's covered

HIPAA Overview

Aligned to

NIST NICE
K0678 Knowledge of privacy laws and regulations
K0919 Knowledge of Personal Health Information (PHI) data security standards and best practices
NIST CSF
GV.OC-03 Legal, regulatory, and contractual requirements regarding cybersecurity — including privacy and civil liberties obligations — are understood and managed.
ISC2 CISSP
1.4 Understand legal, regulatory, and compliance issues that pertain to information security in a holistic context

Key terms

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
HIPAA
A U.S. federal law that establishes national standards for protecting the privacy and security of patients' health information, known as Protected Health Information (PHI). HIPAA's Security Rule requires covered entities and business associates to implement administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for electronic PHI.
Protected Health Information
PHI
Protected Health Information is individually identifiable health data covered under HIPAA that requires specific administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect its confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Privacy Rule
The HIPAA provision that establishes national standards for protecting patients' medical records and other personal health information, defining patient rights and permissible uses of that data.
Breach Notification
The legal obligation for a data collector to inform data subjects when their personal data has been compromised in a security incident.
Encryption
The process of converting readable data into an unreadable format using an algorithm and key to prevent unauthorized access.
Access Control
A security mechanism that restricts access to resources based on policies, roles, or identity.

Topics

Hipaa Healthcare Compliance Data Privacy Breach Notification Regulatory Compliance Patient Data Protection

Transcript

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, is designed to protect patients' data.

HIPAA came around in 1996 and was designed to protect patients' health care records in the United States. Really this applies to any kind of providers for health care services who have health care patient records in the United States.

Highlights

Some of the highlights: HIPAA defines the privacy and security around these healthcare records, the rules for transmitting claims and how information is being transmitted, and some of the patient rights.

Some of the patient rights are that the patient has a right to see and receive a copy of their medical records. They have the ability to request amendments — not that it's necessarily a given that those records will be amended, but they can request amendments to those healthcare records. And they have a certain level of control over their health care information, things like they can request for the information to be transferred from one provider to another.

There's an element of enforcement with HIPAA, and rules and regulations and penalties involved with the enforcement. And then also breach notification, if the information was ever suspected to be shared.

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