The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 is a federal law impacting both consumers and providers of health care services. It does the following:
- specifies the types of measures required to protect the security and privacy of personally identifiable health care information
- gives the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services the authority to mandate the use of standards for the electronic exchange of health care data
- specifies what medical and administrative code sets should be used within those standards
- requires the use of national identifiers for health care providers