Who is Affected by HIPAA Compliance Requirement
All organizations that are involved in the handling, storage, disclosure, manipulation and transmission of individually identifiable health care information are grouped as ‘Covered Entities’ and fall within the bracket of organizations ought not to be caught out by the HIPAA compliance deadline.
Covered Entities refers to all Health Plans and Health Care Providers. These Health Plans could be private, state or federal Welfare Insurance Plans. While the employees of covered entities are not included under this classification, all others who do business with covered entities, such as persons or organizations who are involved in the processing of Protected Health Information for whatever purpose, are referred to as Business Associates for the purpose of HIPAA Compliance and for this reason bear the same responsibility as far as this act is concerned.
However, once again, employees or members of staff of these organizations are not classified as business associates and are therefore not liable as individuals for not achieving HIPAA Compliance.
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