HIPAA privacy regulations and nursing research

Background: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy regulations, which became effective on April 14, 2003, should have a significant impact on the conduct of nursing research. Approach: The requirements of the regulations are discussed in three key areas of the research process, accessing data (including recruitment and using medical records), creating data (including intervention studies, survey, and interview research), and disclosing data to others such as colleagues at other institutions. Results: N/A. Discussion: HIPAA will certainly impact nurses' ability to conduct re search but to an unknown degree.