HIPAA Privacy for Health Plans After HITECH Manual
Reinhart's Employee Benefits attorneys have developed a new manual to assist health plan sponsors to understand their privacy obligations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) as a result of recent passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
HITECH not only imposes new obligations, but also modifies some existing regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Sponsors of group health plans, whether they are multiemployer Taft-Hartley plans or individual employers, will find the manual valuable in helping them to understand, point-by-point, how each change that HITECH makes to the existing HIPAA requirements affects their plans.
Key areas presented in the manual include:
- Rules for breaches of unsecured protected health information (PHI)
- The right to restrict disclosure where medical expenses are paid out of pocket
- Restrictions on marketing
- Restrictions on sales of PHI
- Broadening of accounting for disclosures
- The right to request electronic PHI
- Expansion of HIPAA compliance to business associates and business associate agreement updates
- Privacy notice updates
- Rules regarding the use of a limited data set and modification of the minimum necessary rules
- Training obligations
The manual further provides:
- Context for understanding the HITECH updates
- Glossary of key terms
- Appendices containing model policies and procedures to assist plan sponsors to maintain HIPAA compliance
- Overview of the Privacy Rule before HITECH
- Model documents (including policies, procedures, a breach log and related notices, and legal documents including a business associate agreement) on CD-ROM to enable plan development of internal HITECH-compliant documentation
The manual can be ordered here, through the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, at a cost of $110.00 to IFEBP members, and $129.00 to non-members.
View Manual Table of Contents
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