AMA Resources Walk through HIPAA Omnibus & Operating Rules

With the HIPAA Omnibus rule revising and strengthening the privacy, security, breach notification and enforcement rules now in effect, as well as some HIPAA operating rules in force now with more coming soon, the American Medical Association is making available numerous resources to help physician practices comply with the new requirements.

A HIPAA Omnibus toolkit includes a primer to understand basic components of the rules, followed by sections on knowing your compliance requirements, prioritizing compliance activities, template business association agreements and notices of privacy practices, deeper dives into understanding the security and breach notification rules, knowing patients’ rights, really limiting disclosures to the minimum necessary, understanding significant penalties for non-compliance, and additional resources for updates.

Also available is a seven-page primer on the HIPAA “operating rules” to make electronic financial and administrative transactions more uniform and present more payer information to providers. A feature story in the November issue of Health Data Management, in printable format, walks through the eligibility determination and claim status operating rules now in effect, the EFT/ERA rules with a payer compliance date of January 1, 2014, and a batch of additional operating rules coming in 2016.