Assessment of HIPAA compliance: a comparison study of current implementations

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a set of federally mandated regulations passed down to the healthcare industry in an attempt to simplify administrative procedures and reform the insurance market. HIPAA intends to provide healthcare savings by reducing administrative costs by standardizing electronic administrative processes throughout the healthcare industry. It also intends to protect individual privacy from outside agencies with tough new privacy and security measures that include physical security as well as electronic security. As healthcare organizations attempt to become complainant with the new regulations a deadline for HIPAA compliance looms nearer threatening the organizations with the possibility of fines for infractions of the federal regulations. The National Committee on Vital Health and Statistics (NCVHS) recently commented that they were surprised and disturbed by high levels of confusion and frustration regarding the compliance efforts of healthcare providers. In this thesis research is performed to assess the HIPAA readiness of local healthcare providers, specifically Mercy, Methodist, Broadlawns and Mary Greeley hospitals. The data collected from these healthcare organizations is used to compare and contrast the local organizations with each other and against a national benchmark. The results of this comparison show differences within each local health care organizations approach to HIPAA compliance, their concerns and overall perceptions of the HIPAA Act of 1996. Another result of this thesis is an assessment of local HIPAA readiness is relation to national levels of compliance