Which federal regulation is enacted to protect patient information confidentiality and ensure health insurance coverage?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the federal regulation specifically designed to protect patient information confidentiality while simultaneously ensuring health insurance coverage. Enacted in 1996, HIPAA sets national standards for the protection of individuals' medical records and other personal health information. It provides patients with rights over their health information and establishes safeguards to ensure that healthcare providers, insurance companies, and other entities handle this information appropriately.

HIPAA's Privacy Rule establishes how healthcare providers and organizations must manage and protect sensitive patient information, ensuring that patients' privacy is maintained and that their data is not disclosed without their consent. Additionally, the Security Rule complements the Privacy Rule by defining the technical safeguards required to secure electronic protected health information (ePHI).

While other options such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Medicare Modernization Act focus on healthcare accessibility and insurance reforms, they do not specifically address the confidentiality of patient information in the same comprehensive way that HIPAA does. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, promotes the adoption of health information technology but does not exclusively focus on patient information confidentiality. Therefore, HIPAA remains the primary regulation addressing these critical aspects of healthcare