A HIPAA Authorization is not required to have witnesses when signed and does not have to be notarized in order to be legally valid.

You can revoke your HIPAA Authorization at any time. Otherwise, it will expire on the date you specified in the document.

A consent form gives permission to just one health care provider to disclose protected information for treatment or payment purposes. A HIPAA Authorization form is the document that gives Covered Entities (CEs) permission to disclose your information for specific purposes or to those people designated in your document.

While most of your personal medical information is protected under HIPAA laws, certain things are not. For example, your doctor can disclose your information to proper agencies — like health agencies or federal authorities — if you were exposed to an infectious disease or committed a crime.

HIPAA was originally an attempt for health care reform. The legislation's objective was to ensure that healthcare workers had stability between jobs and patient records were protected and confidential as hospitals began to standardize their electronic transmission of data.