The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) established national privacy and security standards for electronic health care transactions, including a national identifier for providers, health plans and employers. Accordingly, by May 23, 2007, healthcare providers and all health plans and clearinghouses must change both their processes and information systems to implement HIPAA’s National Provider Identifier (NPI) regulations.

The Administrative Simplification provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) mandated the adoption of standard unique identifiers for health care providers, as well as the adoption of standard unique identifiers for health plans. They become mandatory on May 23, 2007.

The purpose of these provisions is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the electronic transmission of health information. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has developed the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) to assign these unique identifiers.

American Airlines is sponsoring a “Why You Fly” contest. The grand prize is a year’s worth of flying, and most anyone could use that. You enter by submitting a photo, an essay or a video.

On the contest website, you get to the page that is titled, “Legal Terms and Conditions.” You have to scan down to read the entire text. While most folks might “accept” the terms without reading them, this has some fine print that a photographer should read.

In its January 2007 issue, Today’s Chiropractic examines an unprecedented growth of post-payment audits by insurance companies. Such audit growth is apparent in terms of both audit frequency and judgments.

The study was conducted by Brian Capra, Doctor of Chiropractic and an owner of chiropractic clinic, Yuval Lirov, PhD, patent inventor in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security and book author of “Mission Critical Systems Management,” and Jeffrey Randolph, Esq., Legal Counsel of Association of New Jersey Chiropractors.