HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This act was introduced to prevent health care fraud and abuse and to protect privacy and confidentiality of health care information.

HIPAA comes in two parts, the title 1 which protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families especially when they change their jobs or in circumstances when they lose their jobs. The title 2 is called administrative simplification which specifies standards for health care transactions, providers, insurance plans and employers.

The HIPAA regulations guide several aspects of health insurance including the providers, insurance plans and employers. A highlighting aspect of HIPAA is the health information privacy and protection.

Since the regulation is stringent and has many legal implications, most companies provide HIPAA training to their employees and award HIPAA certification on successful completion of the training.

The HIPAA training focuses on the customer interaction and data safeguard aspects of insurance and healthcare operations. HIPAA training provides complete information about HIPAA requirement for physical safeguards and technical safeguards.

HIPAA requires that the physical access of protected data be controlled, hardware or software removal from the network be monitored, installed monitors to avoid healthcare information from being intercepted during electronic transfer, ensure safety from unexpected deletion or loss of patient health information, and many more requirements that need to be in place to safeguard patient information.

HIPAA training course can be taken by individual employees or all the employees of a company as a whole. The HIPAA training provides all the information about the compliance deadlines and penalties, about who is affected and how its regulations can be implemented in the job and office. It also covers the guidelines for HIPAA guided privacy of healthcare information.

At the end of HIPAA training, there is a final test which checks the employees' understanding of the concepts and other details. On passing the test, HIPAA certification will be awarded. HIPAA training covers all the aspects of HIPAA which a person working in the healthcare insurance industry or in any other industry associated with healthcare, needs to know.

A person with HIPAA certification can expect to know HIPAA standards, HIPAA privacy rules, healthcare information security rules and the implementations of HIPAA regulations. HIPAA training also ensures that the company employees understand the nuances well so that the required changes are made in a simple manner, thereby avoiding rework or excessive overhead costs.

HIPAA certification helps ensure that the company, healthcare agency, medical center or insurance company, is compliant with the requirements. This can help in avoiding severe penalties that are payable in case of violation. HIPAA certification also helps in understanding the legislation better and helps in implementing the required changes in a smooth and phased manner so that there is no interruption in the operations.

The requirements of HIPAA in terms of ensuring the safety and security of patient healthcare information are a good step towards protecting confidentiality. Health information is private to the patient, if shared with an unauthorized third party, it may not only hamper the person's trust and confidentiality it may also lead to unauthorized use of the information in an inappropriate manner. HIPAA certification provides the required groundwork training to implement the act successfully.