NU 525 Unit 3 Discussion Consumer Website Analysis
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Unit 4: Discussion - Electronic Health Record Systems
For healthcare organizations to function at full capacity, all technological and healthcare systems must guarantee protection of patient privacy. Several safeguards are placed into practice to prevent intentional or accidental data breaches of patient information.
What safeguards do you presently have in your professional practice to ensure protection of patient information?
As a healthcare provider, it is crucial to implement numerous measures to ensure protection of my patient information. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a national legislation that protects patient health insurance information. These acts recognize the abuses of most patient information and develop regulations to ensure the protection of human subjects. The
Belmont Report outlines three fundamental ethical principles for human subjects’ research: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. These principles are the foundation for federal research regulations, codified as 21 CFR and 45 CFR 46 (Roberts et al., 2022). The most secure and HIPAA-compliant program for communication, sending, and receiving is through faxes. The electronic health record (EHR) system is used by professional agencies to manage patient information like electronic charting, eliminating the need for physical copies of patient charts. This reduces the risk of information being physically lost or stolen. The range of variables recorded in the EHR may include patient demographics, pre-existing conditions, immunizations, pathology results, prescriptions, reasons for encounters, and clinical assessments. Healthcare professionals have a role as custodians of EHR data. While the primary use of EHRs is to inform and enhance patient care, their detailed longitudinal nature, recorded in electronic format during routine interactions at the point of care, makes the secondary use of EHR data an attractive data source for researchers and policymakers (Vuong et al., 2022).
What safeguards are currently utilized at your healthcare organization to ensure privacy?
I believe that respect is reciprocal because I love it when people respect my privacy; I always safeguard my patient’s information by implementing the following rules. Thus, it’s important to apply password protection for private devices that have patient information to ensure the information is secure. Conversations concerning patients should be discussed privately whether in the office, in the car, or at home. I ensure that patients' phone numbers and addresses are not saved on my phone. It is important to delete any voicemails once listened to, further ensuring patient information is not stored unnecessarily. Also, I make sure to delete any text messages with patients or caregivers every 30 days.
What types of ethical concerns could an organization incur if a data breach were to occur?
The use of media platforms by healthcare providers and patients has become more popular in the past five years. Although there are many benefits to using social platforms, there also are challenges when providers use social media. The term social media refers to electronic communication in which providers and users can educate, communicate, and network (Vanalstine & Coffin, 2022). Unfortunately, with social media use comes frequent violations of HIPAA protections regarding patient information. Social media places patient information at risk
of potential HIPAA violations regarding patient confidentiality, privacy, respect, and other protected health information (PHI). The average data breach costs a covered entity, on average, $8.19 million, or 420 dollars for every stolen or breached record. (Vanalstine & Coffin, 2022). Violations of HIPAA expose patient information that should have remained confidential, and this
exposure can result in multiple lawsuits, affecting the malpractice insurance of the healthcare provider or organization.
Reference
Roberts, M. K., Fisher, D. M., Parker, L. E., Darnell, D., Sugarman, J., Carrithers, J., Weinfurt, K., Jurkovich, G., & Zatzick, D. (2020). Ethical and Regulatory Concerns in Pragmatic Clinical Trial Monitoring and Oversight.
Ethics & human research
,
42
(5), 29–37. https://doi.org/10.1002/eahr.500066
Vanalstine, J., & Coffin, J. (2022). Social Media: Benefits, Challenges, and Pitfalls for Physicians.
Podiatry Management
,
41
(1), 121–123.
Vuong, K., Ivers, R., Hall Dykgraaf, S., Nixon, M., Roberts, G., & Liaw, S. T. (2022). Ethical considerations regarding the use of pooled data from electronic health records in general practice.
Australian journal of general practice
,
51
(7), 537–540. https://doi.org/10.31128/AJGP-08-21-6140
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