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In response to widespread concern that information otherwise regarded
as private becomes readily accessible to the general public through
the pervasive use of electronic databases, President Clinton, in
conjunction with a series of administrative simplification regulations
requiring the standardization and security of electronic health
care data, on December 20, 2000 signed the final HIPAA Privacy
rule to require certain entities to comply with measures to protect
the privacy of an individual's healthcare information. (The Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"),
P.L. 104-191). President Bush permitted the rule to become effective
on April 14, 2001. On July 6, 2001, the Department of Health and
Human Services, Office of Human Rights published guidelines for
the final rule in response to concerns expressed by the healthcare
industry. In order to further respond to such concerns, HHS published
a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with proposed changes to the Privacy
rule on March 27, 2002, opening those proposed changes up to public
comments for 30 days. On August 14, 2002, final modifications to
the Privacy rule were published. The compliance date is April 14,
2003 (except for small health plans, which have until April 14,
2004 to comply).
We will be adding additional analyses to this section over time.
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