U.S. Senate delays HIPAA transaction and code set standards

Dec 4, 2001

Last week the U.S. Senate approved a bill (S. 1684) that would postpone until October 2003 the compliance deadline for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's transactions and code sets rules.

The U.S. House of Representatives is now considering its own version of the extension (H.R. 3323), and may vote on it as early as today, according to knowledgeable sources.

The two versions of the proposed legislation implement the same one-year delay, but they accomplish it differently, said Tom Gilligan, executive director of the Association for Electronic Health Care Transactions, an industry group that advocates the increased use of electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions in healthcare.

While the Senate version simply delays implementation until October 2003, the House version contains significant restrictions, Gilligan told AuntMinnie.com.

"[The House version] says everybody who is not compliant by 2002 has to send to the [Health and Human Services] secretary a plan for how they will become compliant by 2003," he said. "And if you don't submit a plan and you're not compliant, you get thrown out of the program -- so all you radiologists better get cracking."

HIPAA's privacy, security, identifiers, and enforcement provisions would be unaffected by the delay.

Gilligan said that while a two-thirds vote would be needed to approve the House version, he expects it to pass today. That move will be followed by a reconciled version very soon -- perhaps by the end of the week, he said.

While some healthcare organizations would prefer to derail HIPAA entirely, others oppose any delay in implementation. On November 29, AHAnews.com reported that in a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, the American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Federation of American Hospitals complained that the delay would unfairly penalize those who had made the effort to comply by the original deadline.

By AuntMinnie.com staff writers
December 5, 2001

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HIMSS embraces HIPAA privacy regulations, April 3, 2001