The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a legislative rule advocating for the development of quality measures to safeguard patients’ well-being data from being disclosed devoid of the owners’ permission and knowledge. HIPAA was established with two main goals; firstly, it addresses insurance coverage for individuals between jobs since such workers used to face insurance coverage losses because of the nature of the positions (Carlson & Mandel, 2017).
Secondly, HIPAA prevents healthcare fraud and ensures that all secure health data is stored appropriately and safely. This essay will explore HIPAA and the ACA and their impact on general health care procedures, information advancements, and medical data confidentiality.
Thus, these guidelines have potentially improved the efficiency of the health service, increased the mobility of health coverage, and safeguarded the security of patient information. For instance, HIPAA introduced several essential benefits for the healthcare sector to aid with the transition from the paper written to electronic forms of health data making it safe and easily accessible (Carlson & Mandel, 2017). The procedures have also helped improve efficiency in the health facilities and ensure that health data is securely transmitted. Lastly, HIPAA guarantees that the transfer of electronic health information is effectively shared between healthcare specialists, health plans, and other concerned entities.
Moreover, HIPPA founded regulations requiring health organizations to manage and regulate who is responsible for checking and sharing health records. In general, HIPAA’s main objective is to protect clients’ privacy while ensuring that they receive the best medical care needed (Shahriar et al., 2021). Violating HIPPA guidelines leads to very unrelenting repercussions. Being aware of the consequences, healthcare professionals should keep in mind how to secure this delicate data and enlighten the patient on protecting their sensitive data safely.
On the other hand, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was officially implemented in March 2010 to provide comprehensive health care to the general public. The regulation offers clients health care allowance, which decreases the prices for families with earnings between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL) (Powell & Xirasagar, 2017). Furthermore, ACA has assisted in expanding medical professionalism and developed a health insurance marketplace for patients, especially from low-earning households. It has also averted insurance companies from declining coverage because of certain disorders, allowing everyone to receive medical attention.
Improving healthcare services through the use of technology is among the primary objectives of the ACA rule. The process of integrating technology and data to improve the quality care of the patient is called informatics. Thus, because of ACA, informatics has been used as a method to assess treatment options. Healthcare professionals find it easy to track the historical records on how patients have been treated previously. Informatics has enabled doctors to easily share their patient’s data through integrated electronic health care records. This allows physicians to monitor, regulate, and provide the best care for the patients (Tavares et al., 2017).
Furthermore, ACA’s efforts have also helped in improving medical efficiency. This is easily noticed when professional doctors check the success of specific treatments. Thus, the system can reveal the unseen mistakes either in medical or Medicaid, which allows experts to follow-up and remedy the situation. Hence, this informatics has become an efficient way of increasing revenue and reducing costs in health centers.
Furthermore, through informatics, ACA plays a part in integrating new technology. While increasing the quality of healthcare services, medical technology creates a means of balancing innovations to improve caregiver performance and promote the recovery process. (Tavares et al., 2017). Technological progress gives doctors opportunities to access genome sequence information. This allows efficient diagnosing of diseases; hence more research on mutations and other better learning processes can be applied. Due to the above aspects, it becomes easier, safe, and practical to transfer data, thus, safeguarding patient privacy.
As a result, healthcare institutions must handle technologies and HIPAA compliance as more medical personnel use smartphones to enhance communication on patient problems. On the other hand, the rapidly expanding area of healthcare informatics promises to have a tremendous influence on medicine and health care.
References
Carlson, S., & Mandel, J. (2017). Commentary on “Electronic communication of protected health information: Privacy, security, and HIPAA compliance.” The Journal of Hand Surgery, 42(6), 417-419. Web.
Powell, D., & Xirasagar, S. (2017). Excess deaths among the uninsured before the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and potential post-ACA reductions. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 23(3), e18-e28. Web.
Shahriar, H., Haddad, H., & Farhadi, M. (2021). Assessing HIPAA compliance of open-source electronic health record applications. International Journal of Information Security and Privacy, 15(2), 181-195. Web.
Tavares, J., GoulĂŁo, A., & Oliveira, T. (2017). Electronic health record portals adoption: Empirical model based on UTAUT2. Informatics for Health and Social Care, 43(2), 109-125. Web.