A Summary of the Proposed HIPAA Regulations Implementing HITECH
HIPAA Privacy Rule

1.) HIPAA Privacy Rule

The Privacy Rule applies to “covered health care entities” (covered entities or CEs) and their business associates.  Covered entities include health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers who transmit information related to certain health care transactions (such as claims and referral authorization requests) electronically.4  The term “health plan” includes individual and group organizations that provide or pay for medical care, such as health insurance companies, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), company health plans, and government programs that pay for health care, including Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ health care programs.5  A health care clearinghouse is a business, such as a billing service, that processes nonstandard health information it receives from another entity into a standard format, or vice versa. 6