When HIPAA was brought to the medical industry it was a welcomed and needed addition to the already policy heavy industry. Because of how much was involved with it and how many changes would take place as a result of it HIPAA consulting agencies were needed to help medical offices and hospitals get up to speed.

Anytime a big change comes down the pipeline there will be growing pains. This is true for any industry and it was also true for the medical industry as well. The changes that took place were big. One of the reasons it was so difficult for the medical industry to catch on to what HIPAA was and required was because many doctors do not know the first thing about insurance, how it works, or any of the other paperwork involved in their office.

Doctors might be great with patients and their need for help, but when it comes to paperwork and documents and things of that nature you can forget it, they get lost very quickly. It is mainly because their entire career they have nurses and receptionists and aids taking care of every little bit of that paperwork.

This was a change that needed to be implemented right away and the government was taking infractions very seriously. This entire act basically centered around patient privacy. Keeping their conditions private, their records, and anything else concerning everything they are doing at the hospital or doctor's office.

One of the biggest new changes was that before any medical information was to be shared with any other agencies for any reason, the patient must give express written consent for the communication to take place. In the past only a faxed request or written request from the doctor would do. Today all the power rests with the patient.

It shouldn't have been too hard. Most of what was changed was just having people sign in a couple new places because they would now be in full control of their records where as in the past the doctors seemingly had more control than anyone. With the new system no one could see anything from a patients records without their say so.

When a doctor needed x-ray films or records from a patients last visit to their office, they needed to get the patient to sign permission for them to do so. As a proactive measure most doctors now have a form that their new patients sign that gives them rights in advance to procure forms from other offices if the need should arise.

People thought this would be just another form to hand out and boy were they mistaken. HIPAA consulting might have saved the medical industry from taking five large steps in the wrong direction. As difficult as it all may have been we as patients are all better for it. We no longer will have issues with the wrong people getting our records. IT is even difficult for us to get our own sometimes, but that is a good thing because it is that hard or harder for everyone else.