HIPAA: 17. Disclosure to Family and Friends

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is designed to protect patient health information, so a great deal of the act's content is dedicated to outlining how and when covered entities can disclose protected health information, or PHI. As you may have already learned, the HIPAA Privacy Rule outlines six different permitted uses and disclosures. You can learn more about those in the Privacy Rule training. The goal of this program is to address concerns regarding disclosing PHI to family and friends. This is one of the more complex HIPAA topics because the situations are so varied.