Patient’s Guide to HIPAA

If you’ve been to see a doctor at any time during the last few years, you’ve no doubt been required to sign new forms related to your privacy. Often they’re long, complicated, and in 7 point font. If it’s a new doctor, you may not even have noticed that form in the deluge of medical history, health insurance, and other reams of paperwork you had to fill out.

The bad news is that these forms may get even more complicated. Part of the Obama stimulus package included funds to increase the electronicization of medical records.

But the good news is that today, privacy expert Robert Gellman and the World Privacy Forum published an easy to read, searchable, consumer-friendly Patient’s Guide to HIPAA, the law governing those records.

There’s even an entire section devoted to those forms you fill out at the doctor’s office.