Why HIPAA was Created?

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 61% of healthcare data breaches are due to the negligence of employees. So as you can see navigating healthcare administration today is difficult enough, but before the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted, it might as well have been the wild west. During this time, there were no federal regulations protecting health information. This is hard to imagine considering how HIPAA has such a huge influence on the healthcare industry today. So what led to HIPAA being created in the first place?
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The practice of medicine itself has been around for thousands of years. For a long time, there was little thought towards the storing of patient information. Doctors and nurses would store patient charts and notes in files and filing cabinets.
It was the technological boom in the 90s that prompted the need for stricter security surrounding healthcare information and also taking into consideration the ethics of allowing such personal information to be unregulated. For instance, before HIPAA, companies could receive detailed information about their employees health insurance and what they are being treated for. Who’s to say this knowledge couldn't influence an employer to pass over someone for a promotion, who otherwise might deserve it, just because they are regularly attending therapy for an anxiety disorder?
An employer may inappropriately assume this might be a risk and go with someone who is underqualified, but does not have documented mental health problems.
But the introduction of HIPAA didn’t exactly gain full support of the public right away.
Skeptics would question whether HIPAA might be too bothersome and expensive to install. Some people thought it might be redundant of the existing state privacy laws and that they would not add value for the amount of work to put into enforcing it.
But as it is today, there were still many professionals that would need access to patient’s health data. Doctors, nurses, technicians, administrative staff, and third party entities all handle PHI.
So regardless of skepticism from the public, there was still a pressing need for change in the healthcare administration process. Especially as this information was beginning to be kept digitally as opposed to only on paper. Sure this meant that companies were better streamlining their administrative duties with this budding technology, but also opening themselves to novel cybersecurity attacks.
To put this more into perspective, even with HIPAA in place today, the total cost of a healthcare breach now equals around $10 million according to IBM.
Could you imagine how high that number would be if we didn’t have federal regulations to help keep our PHI safe? Not good.
HIPAA is essential for upholding safeguards that can help prevent unauthorized disclosures. Having a system in place to keep this data secure is one thing, but don’t forget to practice good compliance as well. Without the proper training and awareness, even the best security system is useless. So remember to practice good compliance through interactive training!
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