Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rules and Implications for the Practice of I-O Psychology
Mark J. Schmit
Chair, Committee on Professional Practice
As an amendment to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published regulations governing Standards of Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy Rule) in the Federal Register on August 14, 2002. These rules went into effect on April 14, 2003. Several I-O psychologists have contacted me in my role as chair of the Committee on Professional Practice to help understand the implications of these rules for their practice.
I have taken a close look at the regulations and it appears that most I-O psychologists will not be affected by the HIPAA Privacy Rules. These regulations are applicable to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers who handle individually identifiable health information and conduct certain financial or administrative transactions electronically. Protected health information is informationwhether in electronic, oral, or paper formatthat identifies an individuals physical or mental health condition, the health care that the individual has received, or payments for such care. So, unless your executive assessments include health care related diagnostics (e.g., mental health) you should not be a covered provider. Those working in EAPs will certainly be covered. Also, any I-O psychologist or other psychologist performing services for an employer for which insurance reimbursement is sought, or which the employer (acting as a self-insurer) pays for, would have to make sure that the employer is complying with the Privacy Rules. Still, it is my opinion that voluntary compliance with many of the Privacy Rules would result in best-practice procedures for I-O psychologists doing executive assessments. Most elements of the rules regarding privacy are in line with the APA Ethical Principles which should govern our behavior in our practices.
I have also consulted with APA staff members, including Dianne Brown
Maranto, director of Psychology in the Workplace, and Angelia Bowman, JD, Legal and Regulatory Affairs. They agreed with this analysis and position.
For additional information on this topic, you might begin by consulting an online toolkit produced by SHRM. It provides several key links and useful white papers on the topic:
http://www.shrm.org/hrtools/toolkits/hipaatoolkit.asp.
July 2003 Table
of Contents | TIP Home
| SIOP Home
|