HIPAA

What is HIPAA? The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. The Administrative Simplification provisions of HIPAA are intended to reduce the costs and administrative burdens of health care by making possible the standardized, electronic transmission of many transactions that are carried out manually on paper or have several different formats for each.

BCBSKS implemented changes for Transactions and Code sets in October 2003. Privacy changes were implemented in April 2003. Security changes were implemented in March 2005.

For more information on how HIPAA will affect electronic data interchange, see the ASK Web site at ask-edi.com.

National Provider Identifier (NPI)

The administrative simplification provisions of HIPAA require the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to adopt a national standard identifier for covered health care providers. The National Provider Identifier (NPI) will be the standard identifier and CMS is developing the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) to identify providers and assign NPIs.