Abstract
HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, enacted in 1996 is intended to provide continuity of healthcare insurance coverage. These standards are designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the healthcare system by standardizing the interchange of electronic data for specified administrative and financial transactions, and Protect the security and confidentiality of electronic health information. There are legal, regulatory, process, security, and technology aspects to each proposed rule that must be carefully evaluated before an organization can begin its implementation plan.

HIPAA compliance will have a major, ongoing impact on healthcare business in several areas such as the availability of significant recourses, retooling of IT, as well as major operational and procedural changes. Transactions will become more standardized, resulting in eventual savings for electronic data interchange. Security and privacy regulations will be the most difficult and costly to implement and maintain because they are broad in scope, less definitive, and require constant vigilance for ongoing compliance. The paper further elaborates on HIPAA transaction and HIPAA code standards at great depth.

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