The history of HIPAA began August 21, 1996. Congress enacted the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It required the HHS or (Health and Human Services) recommend standards protecting the privacy of individuals health information by August 21, 1997. With HIPPA coming into law in 1996 it came with a promise and sweeping changes in the management and operation of security for healthcare organizations. The main purpose of HIPAA was to mandate healthcare information and enable it to be uniform my utilizing electronic transactions.
Since the primary purpose of HIPAA was to allow healthcare to become portable (meaning a patient can have access to their medical records anywhere and anyplace at anytime) with the utilization of electronic medical records. In order for this to take place medical records have to be protected better than it once was. It is also necessary to protect the same information with rules of how the information would be secured and safeguarded.
HIPAA rules are separated into four sections; administrative safeguards, physical safeguards, security services and security mechanisms. Administrative safeguards handle those policies, procedures, and practices that are used by an entity to handle protected health information. This is handled by policies and procedures that are used in the normal day to day operation of any practice. Physical safeguards are security measures to handle physical access to any data in the facility. Meaning everything has to be kept under lock and key. No records are to be kept in the open for anyone to see. Anything with a patient’s name, social security number or medical record number has to be shredding or disposed of properly. This will go as far as using a cover sheet when faxing.

When utilizing the electronic medical records there must be a firewall in place to prevent computer