By Diane Evans
Following elections, questions often arise about the fate of privacy laws. The short answer: Both conservatives and liberals support privacy protections, and regulations keep expanding.
In recent years, for example, 19 states have enacted consumer privacy laws, applying both to left-leaning states such as California and Oregon, and right-leaning states such as Indiana and Texas.
Relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, some states exempt organizations already regulated by HIPAA, while other states must assess added burdens of new state laws.
Separately, bipartisan federal legislation, known as the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), continues to move through Congress. The bill borrows heavily from HIPAA, with proposed requirements such as the collection of minimum-necessary information only.
By and large, HIPAA itself remains much the same since 2013, when a sweeping overhaul of legislative requirements became effective.
The premise is to protect private information, and that is in everyone’s interest. Nobody wants sensitive or potentially embarrassing information getting into the wrong hands. And nobody wants their Social Security numbers stolen, for example, or credit card numbers, that could lead to fraud or identity theft.
If anything, new privacy provisions will likely continue to keep pace with new and emerging threats to the databases that hold so much information on all of us.
About the author
Diane Evans is founder of Guarded Edge, which offers training and an in-house implementation plan for compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) within long-term care. Diane can be reached at devans@guardededge.com. She has offered accredited training for state and national organizations, including the Health Care Compliance Association and the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.
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