[Council Communication]  [Attachments]

Council Communication

Title:	Hybrid Entity Resolution
Dept:	Legal Department
Date:	January 6, 2004
Submitted By:	Michael Franell
Through:	Paul Nolte
Approved By: ...........................	Gino Grimaldi, City Administrator

Synopsis:	Attached is a resolution declaring Ashland to be a hybrid entity under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), with the Fire and Ambulance Service being the only covered department.
Recommendation:	Pass this resolution declaring Ashland to be a hybrid entity.
Fiscal Impact:	This should save the City an undetermined amount in labor and paperwork necessary to make all departments HIPAA compliant.
Background:	The Federal Government passed HIPAA in 1996. The Act became effective in 2001 with a compliance deadline for medical providers of April 2003. One of the requirements under the Act is for medical providers to insure patient access to medical records and the confidentiality of those records. There is a substantial amount of paper work required for medical providers to comply with the confidentiality requirements of the Act. The Ashland Ambulance Service is considered a medical provider under HIPAA. The remaining functions the city performs would not be generally covered, except for the fact that the Ambulance is a covered entity. The Act provides the opportunity for an entity to declare itself a hybrid entity when it has a portion of its function that is covered and a portion that is not covered. This allows the entity to avoid application of the Act to the functions that would otherwise not be covered, thus saving unnecessary paperwork for those functions.
Attachments:	• The proposed hybrid entity resolution.

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