Finding HIPAA in your soup

From the time when compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) "privacy rule" became mandatory in April 2003 through April 2005, 12,542 complaints of privacy violations were filed nationally. But what constitutes a violation? Widespread confusion about the rule unnecessarily complicates nurses' relationships with patients and sometimes affects their clinical performance. A nurse responsible for HIPAA compliance at one hospital untangles the many threads of HIPAA's privacy rule and details its implications for nurses' everyday work.