Healthcare Regulatory Agencies: Health and Human Services

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Table of Contents

Importance of the Agency – HHS
Comparing Documentation Guidelines: Mental Health and Medicare/Medicaid Services
Ramifications from a Stakeholder Perspective
Undergoing Surveys
References

Importance of the Agency – HHS

The Health and Human Services (HHS) is an agency established to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans through fostering a sound and sustained advances in the sciences underlying public health, social services, and medicine. Therefore, the importance of this agency is manifested through multiple programs designed to ensure the provision of essential human and health services, often targeting vulnerable populations. In prevention and wellness programs, the HHS provide resources for individuals to achieve specified health objectives, including healthy eating, exercise, and routine health screenings and vaccinations. Other programs focus on health rights, health insurance, and social services. HHS is important because the agency protects the public from health risks, prevents disease and disability, and promotes healthy behavior.

Comparing Documentation Guidelines: Mental Health and Medicare/Medicaid Services

Documentation guidelines from HHS regarding health records often echo the regulatory frameworks governing health records. For example, HHS has published guidelines for managing health records regarding Medicaid and Medicare transactions. Another document offers guidelines regarding managing patient mental health records and compliance with such regulations as HIPAA. In the first guideline, the HHS emphasizes the need to protect patient data from the Medicare and Medicaid transactions. In essence, these guidelines focus on the insurance aspect of healthcare, where the insurers manage patient data. The guidelines include documentation errors and third-party additional documentation requests. Lastly, the guidelines outline certification procedures for the documentation.

The second guideline focuses on the HIPAA privacy rules regarding sharing information on mental health. The HHS works closely with OCR to assure patients privacy rights and protections regarding their health information. The documentation guidelines are built on frequently asked questions about HIPA and mental health, which address how the health organizations should gather, access, and share patient mental health information. Similar to Medicare/Medicaid guidelines, the HIPAA and mental health guidelines are supported by the relevant regulations regarding health records. Both guidelines focus on the privacy rules applied to protect patient information.

Ramifications from a Stakeholder Perspective

Failure to meet the documentation guidelines for each healthcare setting has various ramifications for the healthcare organizations. Considering that the primary purpose of the HHS is to protect the American public, the agency has HIPAA and health rights programs designed to ensure accountability of healthcare firms. HHS allows individuals harmed by the failure to abide by the guidelines to file complaints under OCR, after which legal actions are taken against the entities. HHS documentation guidelines reflect HIPAA and OCR policies, which means that the agency majorly offers a platform to facilitate these guidelines.

Undergoing Surveys

Facilities often undergo surveys designed to help them understand various HIPAA security rules regarding health records and other patient confidentiality issues. However, the HHS website does not outlines which facilities undergo which surveys. However, online self-assessment surveys are always available for facilities to undertake them at their convenience. Other surveys are often in the form of regulatory audits conducted occasionally, especially when the OCR has a pilot program that need to be tested. For example, OCR and KPMG once selected an initial 20 entities to be audited on HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and Breach Notification compliance initiatives (HHS, 2023). As a pilot audit program, the facilities would be surveys on their compliance with HIPAA privacy rules, which would then be replicated across all entities. The surveys target compliance and other emerging issues.

References

HHS. (2023). HHS office for Civil Rights settles HIPAA investigation with Arizona Hospital System following cybersecurity hacking. HHS.gov. Web.

HHS. (2023). Initial 20 entities selected for audit. HHS.gov. Web.

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Healthcare Regulatory Agencies: Health and Human Services

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