Five Things You Need to Know About HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – better known as HIPAA – went into effect in 1996. HIPAA does a number of things including helping workers keep health insurance coverage whenever they lose or change a job. One of the most important aspects of HIPAA, however, deals with privacy…and it has an impact on everyone.

HIPAA – for the first time – created a set of privacy rules which dictate how, what, where, when and with whom any personal health information can be shared. Essentially, HIPAA established a set of guidelines to minimize the chance that your personal medical information will be disclosed to someone who shouldn’t see it.

Recent years have seen tremendous developments in medicine such as the ability for doctors to email x-rays to specialists for a second opinion in mere seconds. With those advances, however, personal medical information has become more at risk of disclosure. HIPAA established federal protections for protected health information (what’s known as ‘PHI’)… whether it’s a physical paper record in a doctor’s office or an electronic file at an HMO.

Here are 5 important things to know about HIPAA and privacy:

1. HIPAA protects your personal information.
Personally identifiable health information, such as a person’s name, important dates (their birth date, admission or discharge date), phone number, social security number, photographs, and even geographic identifiers such as city, zip code or state are protected.

2. HIPAA gives patients more control over their personal information.
HIPAA grants patients some control over the use of their health information, and with whom it can be shared. HIPAA gives patients personal rights, including: required privacy notices that explain how protected information will be used and shared, the ability to request that protected information be subject to restricted rules of disclosure, and the right to inspect, copy or amend one’s medical records.

3. HIPAA doesn’t impact the quality of medical care.
HIPAA was first implemented many years ago, and most people haven’t even really noticed it. Many patients remember having signed privacy notices at the doctor’s office, but aside from that the changes since HIPAA’s privacy rule went into effect have been mostly behind the scenes and have nothing to do with the delivery or quality of medical care.

4. Many organizations are required to follow the HIPAA privacy rules.
Beyond a patient’s primary care physician is a wide array of companies and organizations that are required to adhere to HIPAA’s regulations, and they are referred to as ‘covered entities.’ They include: most doctors, dentists and chiropractors, Medicare and Medicaid health insurance companies and HMOs, Health Care Clearinghouses, clinics, hospitals, senior living facilities, psychologists, and pharmacies.

5. Many organizations are exceptions to the HIPAA regulations.
Many people are unaware that there are organizations that might have access to personal health information who are not obligated to adhere to HIPAA. These include: employers, life insurance and workers compensation insurers, state offices, municipal offices and school districts, including law enforcement agencies. While most employers adhere to HIPAA’s guidelines, it is critical to understand there are exceptions.

How to Diet Food Review – Brown Rice

If you are interested in dieting, you may have heard talk of how to diet. I can almost guarantee you haven’t heard everything though. In fact, if you read the rest of this how to diet review, you’ll discover three features almost nobody is talking about… yet…

Fiber

Fiber works by shortening the amount of time cancerous toxins stay in the colon, thereby reducing the chance of colon cancer. One cup of brown rice supplies fourteen percent of your daily need of fiber. Selenium also works at reducing the risk of getting colon cancer. One cup of brown rice provides more than twenty five percent of daily intake of selenium. This mineral most average Americans do not get in their diets. This mineral repairs DNA and helps to regularize the division of cells. It also encourages apoptosis, this is where a cell destroys itself if it used up or abnormal. Testing indicated that the there is a very strong correlation between the level of selenium in a diet and the odds of getting cancer. Selenium also helps to reactivate certain proteins which, when inactivated, allow toxins to damage DNA.

Comparison with White Rice

In terms of carbohydrates and calories, there is not much difference between white rice and brown rice. The real difference is the nutrient content and the level of industrial processing. Brown rice is created when the husk of the rice grain is removed. White rice is produced when not only the husk is removed, but also the bran and the germ. Many vitamins and minerals are removed via this act of industrialization. However some B vitamins are recovered due to FDA requirements. One cup of brown rice contains eighty four milligrams of magnesium while white rice contains only nineteen milligrams. Oils, fatty acids and fiber are also removed from white rice.

The B Vitamins

Vitamin B1, thiamine, is responsible for converting common carbohydrates into glucose. Although lack of this vitamin is rare, it can be found in alcoholics, and whatever the negative effects produced can be cured with more of the vitamin. Vitamin B2, riboflavin, helps to break apart proteins, fats and, like thiamine, carbohydrates. Deficits of this vitamin can result in skin and soft tissue damage. Vitamin B3, niacin, is required for processing food, helping the digestive system, preserving the nerves and keeping your skin healthy. Lack of niacin, in the times before, had been associated with the impoverished and led to mental illness.