The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act and the Practice of Dentistry in the United States: Privacy and Confidentiality

Abstract

This paper introduces the reader to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 legislation in the context of its relationship to the Electronic Oral Health Record (EOHR). Privacy and confidentiality issues for administrative data are addressed in terms of the broader relationship of such data to the EOHR leaving the HIPAA-defined administrative transactions and security issues for the entire practice for a subsequent presentation. Educational requirements are presented that aid the dentist and the practice staff in understanding the broad and long-term implications of the HIPAA legislation. Citation Chasteen JE, Murphy G, Forrey A, et.al. The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act: Practice of Dentistry in the United States: Privacy and Confidentiality. J Contemp Dent Pract 2003 February;(4)1:059-070.

Biosurveillance and Dentistry

“…Additional influences in the standardization of the EDR are the security regulations mandated by HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Dentists are required to "adopt practices necessary for compliance" (Sfikas 2003;Chasteen et al 2003). These and other regulations (Szekely et al 1996) will encourage homogeny among different system vendors.…”

“…Dentistry uses several standards for transmission of health related information. Clinical management systems use standard-based technology to transmit information (Narcisi 1996;Chasteen et al 2003;Szekely et al 1996). As we describe elsewhere in this book, the development, implementation, and use of electronic standards among dentists is on the rise and this can expedite the implementation of a biosurveillance system.…”

The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act and the Practice of Dentistry in the United States: System Security

“…Privacy refers to the right of the individual to keep their protected health information private and to control who may access it. 2 Confidentiality refers to the responsibility of the healthcare workforce to maintain the individual patient's private information so it is NOT disclosed inappropriately. Security refers to all of the policies, procedures, tools, and techniques used to assure privacy and confidentiality are adequately addressed in a healthcare system.…”

“…Previous articles have probed the Electronic Oral Health Record (EOHR) and the associated privacy and administrative transaction issues within the HIPAA context. [1][2][3] This paper will examine the system security issues for the dental practice information architecture, beginning with the requirements of the recently released (February 20, 2003) HIPAA security regulations. 4 System security must be applied to the entire technical infrastructure for the practice environment and must be thought of as an enterprise asset.…”

The Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act and the Practice of Dentistry in the United States: Electronic Transactions

“…Two previous articles have developed the aspects of patient care data management via the electronic oral health record (EOHR) and the privacy/confidentiality issues attending both patient care and the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA). 1,2 This article will focus on the administrative transactions that attend patient care and support the dental practice in the provision of quality oral health care. As was noted by Heid et al 1 , data captured to document patient care can also be used to conduct the administrative and resource management transactions that attend management of the dental practice.…”