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Overview
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1966 ("HIPAA"), health care entities and employers must comply with new rules relating to the confidentiality of medical information. Some of the regulations have become final, affecting standard transactions and code sets, privacy, security, national employer identifiers and national provider identifiers.
Vinson & Elkins formed the HIPAA Consortium in June 2000 so that clients could reduce some of the fundamental costs of analyzing the various regulations implemented under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"). On behalf of the Consortium, we will be analyzing final regulations as they are published, developing model forms, creating training parameters, developing model compliance plans and providing assistance with privacy and security compliance issues. Some of the initial services provided to Consortium members include transmitting important HIPAA related government pronouncements, tracking the status of proposed federal regulations and legislation, monitoring HIPAA-related activities of the federal and Texas legislatures, publishing checklists for HIPAA implementation, publishing V&E; HIPAA Headlines and issuing legal analyses on various privacy and security topics.
As final regulations are issued, services provided to Consortium members will include checklists evaluating the need to upgrade or change computer hardware, checklists for issuing RFIs and evaluating vendors’ ability to perform HIPAA-compliant upgrades, contractual considerations for new HIPAA-compliant hardware and software systems and contracts regarding initial and periodic vulnerability analyses. Additional services provided to Consortium members will include analyses of business partner liability, generic HIPAA contract obligations required of standard business partners, information sufficient for reexamination of existing contracts with third parties, procedures for patient access, copying and correction of records, procedures for satisfying the "minimum necessary" requirement, procedures for meeting the verification requirement, guidelines for tracking complaints and resolutions and guidelines for sanctioning employees and business partners. Consortium members also will be provided with model security and privacy policies relating to fax machines, email, laptop computers, employee Internet access, using telephones to transmit health information, personnel security policies, physical access control, workstation security and access policies, access controls, employee termination procedures and internal audit procedures.
Please contact Brenda Strama to request more information and registration materials.
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