The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) was designed to enhance the privacy and security of health information and to standardize health care transactions.

Main Line Health Laboratories (MLHL) has successfully implemented all of the standards related to the patient privacy rule and is fully compliant with the standardized transaction requirements. The standards for electronic transactions will require covered entities (health care providers, health plans, and health care clearinghouses) that conduct electronic transactions, to use standard code sets and identifiers in conducting any of eight specific types of standard electronic transactions.

The third and final phase of HIPAA, security of electronic individually identifiable health information, requires covered entities to implement administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect the confidentiality of patient-identifiable health information when it is stored, maintained, or transmitted electronically. Work on this aspect of the rule continues and we expect to meet the April 2005 deadline.