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Risk of privacy in electronic health records
Risk of privacy in electronic health records
Electronic health records + risks
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Today, providers store patient’s medical record electronically with an easy access via the Internet to users, stakeholders, and agencies. An easy access provides better patient’s care, but also raises concerns about the safety and confidentiality of the information. Medical records are extremely personal and should never be shared with anyone without patient’s consent or as required by law. Our government has implemented laws to protect the consumer’s health records. Strict enforcement of the laws has been effective in limiting breaches of patient’s confidentiality, although there are plenty of cases where we still find compromised patients’ information. Discussion We use electronic health record to communicate between providers of care and …show more content…
Already in 1846, the first Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association contained the notion of privacy (OTA, 1993). Ethical considerations for electronic health records are security, privacy, confidentiality, data integrity and availability. We can install security officers, encryption, encoding, several layers of security, and train staff to control any breaches in privacy, but it will be all in vain if those who operate the technology do not feel ethically obligated to protect the health record integrity. Other ethical issues that come about in regards to electronic health records are beneficence, fidelity, autonomy and justice. Use of electronic records may place the patient information at risk, but on the other hands the availability and speed of transmission of information can enhance patients’ care and decrease cost. Therefore, the use of EHR holds the promise of beneficence. However, a conflict arises when considering fidelity, autonomy and justice. Patients do not have much control or autonomy over their health record. Fidelity is violated with every breach in confidentiality weather intentional or
As the evolution of healthcare from paper documentation to electronic documentation and ordering, the security of patient information is becoming more difficult to maintain. Electronic healthcare records (EHR), telenursing, Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) are a major part of the future of medicine. Social media also plays a role in the security of patient formation. Compromising data in the information age is as easy as pressing a send button. New technology presents new challenges to maintaining patient privacy. The topic for this annotated bibliography is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Nursing informatics role is imperative to assist in the creation and maintenance of the ease of the programs and maintain regulations compliant to HIPAA. As a nurse, most documentation and order entry is done electronically and is important to understand the core concepts of HIPAA regarding electronic healthcare records. Using keywords HIPAA and informatics, the author chose these resources from scholarly journals, peer reviewed articles, and print based articles and text books. These sources provide how and when to share patient information, guidelines and regulation d of HIPAA, and the implementation in relation to electronic future of nursing.
Abstract: Electronic medical databases and the ability to store medical files in them have made our lives easier in many ways and riskier in others. The main risk they pose is the safety of our personal data if put on an insecure an insecure medium. What if someone gets their hands on your information and uses it in ways you don't approve of? Can you stop them? To keep your information safe and to preserve faith in this invaluable technology, the issue of access must be addressed. Guidelines are needed to establish who has access and how they may get it. This is necessary for the security of the information a, to preserve privacy, and to maintain existing benefits.
Disclosing confidential patient information without patient consent can happen in the health care field quite often and is the basis for many cases brought against health care facilities. There are many ways confidential information gets into the wrong hands and this paper explores some of those ways and how that can be prevented.
With today's use of electronic medical records software, information discussed in confidence with your doctor(s) will be recorded into electronic data files. The obvious concern is the potential for your records to be seen by hundreds of strangers who work in health care, the insurance industry, and a host of businesses associated with medical organizations. Fortunately, this catastrophic scenario will likely be avoided. Congress addressed growing public concern about privacy and security of personal health data, and in 1996 passed “The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act” (HIPAA). HIPAA sets the national standard for electronic transfers of health data.
HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was put in place by the Federal Government for several reasons; better portability of health insurance for employees, to prevent fraud and abuse within the healthcare delivery system, and simplification of administrative functions associated with healthcare delivery (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2012). Due to sensitive healthcare information being shared federal regulations were also put into place, resulting in the “Privacy Rule” and “Security Rule”. The Privacy Rule limits the use and disclosure of patient information. The Security Rule protects the patients’ healthcare information from improper use or disclosure, to maintain information integrity, and ensure its availability (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2012). Both regulations apply to protected health information (PHI) which is any form of health information that can be used to identify an individual patient. Practitioners who refer to HIPPA are not referring to the act itself but the “Privacy Rule” and “Security Rule” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2012). It is extremely important to understand these concepts as a student in the clinical setting and how each hospital enforces these concepts. Before starting at any clinical site there is an extensive orientation about HIPPA regarding what is appropriate and not appropriate when it comes to patient information and the repercussions of violating HIPPA. In this paper I will discuss Akron General’s rules and policies regarding their EHR, PHI, EPHI, and social media.
Each time a patient visits a doctor, is admitted to a hospital, goes to a pharmacist, or sends a claim to a health plan, a record is made of the confidential health information. The use of this information is protected and pieced together by state laws, which leave gaps in the protection of patient's privacy and confidentiality. Together all of the programs mentioned are developing strategies to better protect patient records. AHIMA members foresee daily conflicts and challenges dealing with patient confidentiality and access to their records. The resolution of these issues combined will one day result in a comprehensive national standard that will enhance individual privacy, foster research and protect the public health.
The United States’ healthcare system is a three-trillion-dollar industry consisting of doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment providers, and health insurers. With so many components and millions of patients to care for, fast efficient health information systems are needed to reduce cost, store and modify patient information, and administer quality care (Akowuah, Yuan, Xu, Wang, 2012, pg. 40). Although health information systems have helped increase the healthcare industry’s efficiency and effectiveness, it has also exposed millions of patient’s identities and medical records to cyber-attacks. Managers in the healthcare field should be aware of cyberattacks, the laws that protect and secure patient’s privacy,
Privacy challenges. Privacy is a circumstance of restricted right of entry to an information regarding an individual (Knoppers, 2015). Brothers and Rothstein (2015) noted numerous other kinds of privacy, comprising physical, decisional, proprietary and relational or associational privacy. This study emphasizes on informational health privacy. When it comes to privacy issues the crucial question to explore is; how can leadership balance the right of privacy with the advantageous requirement for clinical data-access in EHR? The Privacy Act of 1974 is the US law that represents national standards to protect the private health information of individuals by mandating appropriate safeguards and limitations on the right to use and release of (PHI)
Privacy and confidentiality is a very important concept in the health care system and must be handled carefully to avoid disclosing crucial information about patients.
A major concern with EHR systems is patient confidentiality. Even though these systems are used with the best intentions, patient’s personal and medical information might be exposed to unauthorized personnel. An estimated 150 different healthcare professionals have access to a patient’s records during a hospitalization (Kreuser, 2007). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets a national standard for the protection of individual’s health information (“Summary of the,” 2014). With little governance, organizations can violate HIPAA regulations. The Hospice of North Idaho (HONI), which is a not-for-profit, end-of-life-care facility, breached HIPAA standards when they did not evaluate the potential risks of transmitting electronic protected health information (ePHI) while using portable devices. These actions resulted in a $50,000 fine, coupled with a two-year probation period (Lynn, 2013). According to The Financial Impact of Breached Protected Health Information: A Business Case for Enhanced PHI Security, the health information of nearly 18 million people has been breached electronically from 2010-2012 (Kam, 2012). Such events cause the general public to question the privacy of EHRs, and because of these concerns, wary patients are less likely to disclose necessary health information. The Department of Health and Human Services estimated that because of a lack of trust in the ability of EHR systems to keep health information private, approximately 600,000 Americans did not seek earlier cancer treatment and 2,000,000 Americans did not undergo treatment for mental illness (Kam, 2012). As patients’ medical records are becoming computerized, the susceptibility to information being accessed by the wro...
Health information opponents has question the delivery and handling of patients electronic health records by health care organization and workers. The laws and regulations that set the framework protecting a user’s health information has become a major factor in how information is used and disclosed. The ability to share a patient document using Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is a critical component in the United States effort to show transparency and quality of healthcare records while protecting patient privacy. In 1996, under President Clinton administration, the US “Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)” established national standards for the safeguard of certain health information. As a result, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 or (HIPAA) was established. HIPAA security standards required healthcare providers to ensure confidentiality and integrity of individual health information. This also included insurance administration and insurance portability. According to Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), an organization must guarantee the integrity, confidentiality, and security of sensitive patient data (Heckle & Lutters, 2011).
In her article, Strauss takes a line from the Hippocratic oath, that the health care practitioner will ensure patient privacy through the statement, “Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private” (2012, p. 19). Even in the earliest days of medicine, patient privacy was a concern. With advances in information technology (IT), and its many applications within the healthcare industry, maintaining patient privacy remains as pertinent as ever.
The purpose of the Electronic Health Record is to provide a comprehensive, standardized and universal digital version of a patient 's health records. The availability of a patient 's digital health record provides health information and data for critical thinking and evidence based decision-making, aggregates patient data for quality assurance and research. The Electronic Health Record has been, "identified as a strategy for effectively and efficiently coordinating and maintaining documentation of patients health histories and as a secure method of providing more informed clinical decision making" (MNA, 2006).
Our clinical knowledge is expanding. The researcher has first proposed the concept of electronic health record (EHR) to gather and analyze every clinical outcome. By late 1990s computer-based patient record (CPR) replaced with the term EHR (Wager et al., 2009). The process of implementing EHR occurs over a number of years. An electronic record of health-related information on individual conforms interoperability standards can create, manage and consult with the authorized health professionals (Wager et al., 2009). This information technology system electronically gather and store patient data, and supply that information as needed to the healthcare professionals, as well as a caregiver can also access, edit or input new information; this system function as a decision support tools to the health professionals. Every healthcare organization is increasingly aware of the importance of adopting EHR to improve the patient satisfaction, safety, and lowering the medical costs.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA), Confidential Information and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA), and the Freedom of Information Act all provide legal protection under many laws. It also involves ethical protection. The patient must be able to completely trust the healthcare provider by having confidence that their information is kept safe and not disclosed without their consent. Disclosing any information to the public could be humiliating for them. Patient information that is protected includes all medical and personal information related to their medical records, medical treatments, payment records, date of birth, gender, and