During the years of post-industrial to contemporary medicine there has been a fundamental need to focus on patient’s rights, particularly the inalienable right of patient privacy. What has been said time and again before the passage of HIPAA is that the state of medical affairs within the United States could easily be manipulated to fit the needs of unlawful people. People could call in for prescription medicine that was not theirs’. Others could even walk in to health clinics assuming the identity of others. With this fundamental concern, came the birth of HIPAA.
The first title of HIPAA (Title I) was actually passed into law in 1986 and was called The Internal Revenue Code of 1986. Title 1 protects individuals from heavy financial burden by letting them keep their health insurances if they change or lose their jobs. The quite important and very well covered part of HIPAA is Title II which sets up a federal regulatory body that protects individual privacies. HIPAA has had a wide scale impact on hospitals and medical care in general. The regulatory laws require individuals to fill out forms and provide proof of identification for every visit. Title II also allows the US Department of Health and Human Services to draft legislation that would increase the efficiency of U.S. Healthcare altogether.
Besides HIPAA’s overall glossiness, there are and have been some notable issues coming from Health Care providers. The one very important issue being that not enough access is given to healthcare providers in order to have accurate patient information. One notable example can be seen from Dr. Deeb Salem’s, chief medical officer at the Tufts-New England Medical Center, experience where after he and his colleagues had performed a coronary heart transplant they had noticed that the heart might have been infected with a known bacteria before the transplant.
They tried to get the forms and information about the heart, but were refused in compliance with HIPAA enforced patient laws. Dr Salem tried to persist and told them that the only source to run tests on the heart were in the patient already. Because they had no access to any of the forms, Dr. Salem administered multiple antibiotics for 12-15 hours. This, he said, could have caused the patient even more problems if he had gotten an allergic reaction (Stein, A01). Dr. Salem went even further to state that he has yet to meet a doctor who has not had a problem with HIPAA in some way.
The problem does not just go to providers, but patients are having some issues. The long monotonous forms that patients have to fill out have become an issue and have been given a reason for crowded waiting areas and the long waits. The problem does not just stop there patients are becoming fed up with repeatedly filling out forms that they have filled out multiple times. Many people see these issues as very irritating, but they all can agree that these issues are relatively mild compared to identity theft and many of the issues HIPAA is protecting patients from.
HIPAA in the beginning was passed to increase efficiency within the medical field, but one should not forget that primary and perhaps fundamental purpose that HIPAA has occupied are the issues surrounding privacy and how to safeguard against those who try to intrude into others’ privacy. People have had repeated issues with identity theft before its passage and so HIPAA was needed in order to provide the government with the abiity to enforce regulation that would help protect the medical consumer.
Throughout American medical history dating from the industrial to the post-industrial age, medicine was primarily a portable or semi-portable profession. Physicians would often come to people’s homes or if people were sick, they would be taken to places where others were sick who probably had little care in the world of the problems of others. In other words, modern medicine has found a way to serve the masses in relatively confined areas. By confinement, there are only a certain amount of hospitals within a city and each serves quite a large number of individuals .With this confinement, people could often overhear what other’s malaises are or what others are going through.
The twentieth century has focused especially on increasing the access to medicine of all individuals within the population, this would include minorities and other underserved populations. With the increase in access, medicine had to conform and it did so through corporatisation and building of several medical facilities. With this came complexity in terms of management. With complexity came, the abuse by certain groups. With this abuse, came the need for reform.
Even though patients and providers both have notable issues with HIPAA, perhaps people should rethink their modern situation. The U.S. may need HIPAA now more than ever. Medicine has changed drastically with the 21st century. The change includes increased technology involved within healthcare organization. With this comes increased reliance on the internet and computer software. The 21st century has done many great things in terms of internet technology, but with it, also, comes incredibly talented individuals who can find ways to get into servers and access important information in which they are not supposed to. Even though HIPAA has yet to find a way to effectively control this; without its regulatory laws and defined guidelines, it would have made it just that much easier for individuals to manipulate out healthcare system.
References
Stein, Rob. “HIPAA: Rules Bring Confusion.” 18 Aug. 2003. The Washington Post Company. Washington Post, Washington, DC. 28 Apr. 2009 http://www.nytimes.com