HEALTH INSURANCE PROTABILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT ("HIPAA") of 1996

Individually identifiable health information, including medical care information, is the property of the individual. The HIPAA privacy rule is intended to promote confidentiality of each patient's personal health information.

The application of the HIPAA privacy rule involves common-sense efforts to keep personal health information away from persons who are not permitted to see it. Healthcare entities, such as Veritas Anesthesia, have Privacy Practices which delineate the procedures in place to assure the coordination and maintenance of the confidentiality of personal health information.

A copy of the Veritas Anesthesia Privacy Practices is available through our office.

Red Flag Rules

According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, as many as nine million Americans have their identities stolen each year. The FTC recently found that a significant percentage of identity theft victims have experienced some form of medical identity theft. Medical identity theft happens when a person seeks health care using someone else's name or insurance information. Victims may find their benefits exhausted or face potentially life-threatening consequences due to inaccuracies in their medical records.

The Red Flags Rule, a federal law the FTC began to enforce on Nov. 1, 2009, requires healthcare entities to develop a written program to spot the warning signs - or "red flags" - of identity theft. Even before the FTC began to enforce the Red Flags Rule, Veritas Anesthesia implemented its own theft-prevention program to detect, prevent and minimize the damage that could result from medical identity theft.