Article: HIPAA: Who Can You Trust?

Parry Aftab's regular column in Information Week is about HIPAA and marketing ... definitely worth reading:

The Privacy Lawyer: HIPAA: Who Can You Trust? > October 4, 2004:

"HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a federal law that sets standards for health-information privacy and security and for the electronic exchange of health information. Physicians and pharmacies, as well as other health-care providers and facilities, all must follow the law to protect prescription information and medical treatments as private patient health information.

But HIPAA is one of the most confusing of all privacy laws and, when marketing issues are involved, one of the most controversial and complicated. HIPAA rules have been amended several times over the course of its development and each amendment has created new controversies. Hundreds of pages of commentary resulted in thousands of pages of comments and concerns from advocacy groups, as well as security, health care, and privacy professionals. These concerns were addressed in some respects when the final HIPAA Privacy Rule became effective in April 2003.... "