Patient’s Guide to HIPAA

The World Privacy Forum is a leading organization in health privacy. Our Patients’ Guide to HIPAA is the only patient-centered resource that explains in simple language how to use the law to protect your privacy.

The Patient’s Guide is now available as an ebook, as a PDF file, and online.

Visit A Patient’s Guide to HIPAA

See the blog roll below for news by date

Dec 19 2019

WPF urges National Institutes of Health to expand privacy guidance for researchers

WPF is urging the National Institutes of Health to do more to properly advise the research community and to protect data subjects in its draft guidance on data management and sharing. WPF is asking for changes to the NIH guidance because in the US, much health research data in the hands of researchers is not subject to the privacy or security rules in HIPAA.

Mar 05 2019

Patient’s Guide to HIPAA: How to Use the Law to Guard your Health Privacy

Download PDF Download ePub Donate Credits → Version 2.0 Prepared by Robert Gellman for the World Privacy Forum, with assistance from Pam Dixon, executive director, World Privacy Forum. John Fanning, former privacy advocate, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Lewis Lorton, health technology and privacy expert contributed to the first edition

Mar 31 2009

Blog Post: Patient’s Guide to HIPAA

New Health Privacy Resource — The Patient’s Guide to HIPAA is the first comprehensive guide to medical privacy written expressly for patients with a practical eye as to how to use the law to protect privacy. It is a major privacy resource for patients, written directly and without legalese. The Patient’s Guide to HIPAA is

New Report – Without Consent: An analysis of student directory information practices in U.S. schools, and impacts on privacy

Without Consent is the first major benchmarking privacy report to examine school directory information practices and related privacy issues in a multi-year study across more than 5,000 schools at the primary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. The research found troubling and challenging student privacy problems that need to be urgently addressed. The report contains extensive findings and recommendations regarding student privacy, and includes best practices, sample forms, and resources for schools, parents, and students.
Patient’s Guide to HIPAA: How to Use the Law to Guard your Health Privacy

Download PDF Download ePub Donate Credits → Version 2.0...
Report: The Geography of Medical Identity Theft

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.