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Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

31 July, 2015 - 17:41

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is the law the specifically singles out records related to health care as a special class of personally identifiable information. This law gives patients specific rights to control their medical records, requires health care providers and others who maintain this information to get specific permission in order to share it, and imposes penalties on the institutions that breach this trust. Since much of this information is now shared via electronic medical records, the protection of those systems becomes paramount.