After long anticipation, on January 25, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published final regulations in the Federal Register (Vol. 78, No. 17) modifying the HIPAA Privacy, Security, Enforcement and Breach Notification rules pursuant to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and HHS’s general rulemaking authority.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), generally speaking, is a federal law that was passed in 1996, the purpose of which is to protect the personal health information of Americans. HIPAA is broken into several categories, including the Privacy Rule, Security Rule and Enforcement Rule.
