What was the economic impact of HIPAA?

Answer 1

In the Prelude and header for the bill, the stated economic impact of HIPAA was thought to be nearly nil. The reasoning behind this thinking is that the insurance part of HIPAA defrays costs that would otherwise be covered under EMTALA, IMS and other support laws, whereas HIPAA would help both insurance companies and providers. As far as the Administrative Simplification section is concerned, HIPAA pretty clearly stated that the crafters's believed that maintaining an electronic tracking system (i.e. computeries accounting, etc.) was not a special cost, but should be the cost of doing business and thus does not ascribe to the bill, cut instead to customary best practic es. That said, going from paper to electronic record keeping almost always shows a major cost reduction, if the project implementing it doesn't fail. An example: Going from manual to electronic Purchase Order tracking for at least one major aerospace company reduced the cost of the average PO (for ANY amount) from $12.30 approx. to approx. $0.45. Hence AdminSimp was intended to be more than self funding. Overall, barring the costs of complete misunderstandings and misconceptions, HIPAA has improved cash flow in caregivers and slightly reduced income for payers in that HIPAA requires a higher degree of trackability, thus reducing profits incorrectly gained from floats on lost paperwork.