Health Advisory: The HIPAA Privacy Regulations- The Final Chapter (Or is it?)
8/1/2002
On August 14, 2002, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published the Final Rule in the Federal Register, making significant modifications to the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy Regulations) issued pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The Proposed Rule, which was issued on March 27, 2002, was well received by most of the health care industry, and HHS received over 11,000 comments in response to the proposal. The Final Rule adopts many of these suggested modifications. In this advisory we discuss certain key points addressed in the Final Rule. While the Final Rule greatly simplifies many aspects of the HIPAA Privacy Regulations, it appears that the legislative saga surrounding these regulations may not yet be over.
