The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) fundamentally changed how insurance companies, healthcare facilities, and data management firms duplicated, transferred, and stored electronic public health information (ePHI).
HIPAA created specific standards for protecting the privacy of all ePHI as part of an overall initiative to encourage the healthcare industry to make it easier for consumers to have their health records travel with them. As it became easier for various individuals, healthcare professionals, companies and organizations to handle and access a person’s health records electronically, it also made it harder to keep that information out of the wrong hands.
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