Final answer:
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 is the privacy rule established to protect individuals' medical records, ensuring the confidentiality of patient information across various entities like healthcare providers and insurers.
Step-by-step explanation:
The privacy rule that is established to protect individual's medical records is known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed into law in 1996. This act sets forth strict standards for maintaining the confidentiality of patient health information. It applies to entities that handle health data, such as insurance companies and healthcare providers. HIPAA aims to balance the costs of treatments and diagnoses, patient quality of life, and risks to individual privacy. Three significant questions that emerge when developing policies include who controls a person's genetic information, what ethical considerations prioritize in cases of public health versus privacy, and which legal safeguards ensure the privacy of this data.
In the context of shared digital records among healthcare providers, HIPAA plays a pivotal role in securing the privacy of electronic health records while promoting improved healthcare quality and cost reduction. Moreover, HIPAA provides guidelines for exceptional circumstances where disclosing patient information might be necessary for public health or safety, complying with legal considerations.
Comparatively, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides extensive data protection laws for its citizens, which are strictly enforced. Similarly, other countries, such as the UK through its Human Rights Act of 1998, recognize the importance of protecting an individual's right to privacy concerning health data.