Following are some of the Internet sites to help practitioners with HIPAA.
A word of caution about online articles on administrative simplification: Some dates quoted for implementation or other deadlines are out of date. Due to the continuing complexity of the project, HHS is not giving official implementation dates for those regulations that have not been finalized.
* www.apa.org/practice/medrecsum.html, prepared by the APA Practice Organization, summarizes the final rule on privacy of patient records.
* HHS has extensive explanation on the rules and their status at aspe.os.dhhs.gov/admnsimp.
* The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, the health-care industry group that has advised this process for some years, now is at www.wedi.org.
* The American Health Information Management Association has articles on the process at www.ahima.org.
* The Massachusetts Medical Society is offering coverage from the viewpoint of the private practitioner, www.massmed.org.
* Other overviews are available at: www.hipaadvisory.com
* An overview of the privacy rule is available on a fact sheet at the HHS Web site: www.hhs.gov/news.
* The HHS Office for Civil Rights, which will enforce the privacy rules, has a website on the rules at: www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/.
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