The underlying was involving a nurse which take a case involves a nurse employed by Guthrie Clinic Steuben in Corning, New York. When the nurse learned of a patient's sexually transmitted disease, she sent 6 text messages to the patient's girlfriend, who was the nurse's sister-in-law, about the patient's condition. The patient -- identified in court documents as "John Doe" who see about the text messages, called the clinic to complain, and then sued the clinic, despite the clinic having terminated the nurse’s employment. Among other things, the patient claimed that the clinic and several related entities had breached their responsibility under the law to keep his health information confidential. The HIPPA violation
This case involves a physician, Dr. Burditt, who had disregarded the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). This act was implemented to prevent “Medicare-participating hospital from “dumping” patients out of the emergency room” (Pozgar, 2016, p. 245). In this case, Dr. Burditt had had examined the patient and made the decision to transfer her to another hospital that was located quite a distance away. When the patient was evaluated, it was noted that she had “dangerously high blood pressure (210/130) and was in active labor with ruptured membranes” (Pozgar, 2016, p. 245). Dr. Burditt should have continued to treat this patient because of her symptoms, which could have resulted in the death
Title II of HIPAA covers two main areas: preventing healthcare fraud and abuse, and a broad series of rules under the framework of administrative simplification. The first area is not of significant interest to most healthcare workers. It defines numerous offenses relating to healthcare, and authorizes several programs to attempt to find and control fraud and abuse. Nurses should be aware of the proper procedures for reporting fraud and abuse at their facility. The second portion of Title II—administrative simplification—however, contains five separate rules, most of which have already had a significant impact on virtually everyone working in American health care, including all those working in any way with health information concerning
Did you know that violating HIPAA can lead to criminal charges and even possible jail time? Also can cost you up to $1.5 million a year depending on the violation (Brown,2014). Violating HIPAA can be something as little as talking about the treatment of your patient that day to another nurse in the elevator. In this paper HIPAA will be defined and the importance of HIPAA in the health care system. As well as outcomes of what will happen if laws are violated. In addition, the scenario ending and what should happen to the nurse. Lastly, the advantages and disadvantages of cellphones and electronic devices in healthcare.
This documentary prompted an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) (CVS Pays $2.25 Million in Record HIPAA Settlement, 2015). In 2009, the HIPAA breach notification requirement was initiated, which mandated that “HIPAA covered entities and their business associates provide notification following a breach of unsecured protected health information (PHI).” More than thirty-two million people have had their PHI violated and more than twenty-six million dollars in fines have been imposed. The Third largest fine given was to CVS in January of two-thousand and nine for two point two five million dollars. The Office of Civil Rights investigation revealed that CVS pharmacy was disposing protected health information in dumpsters that were not secure and could be accessed by the public. The Privacy Rule requires health plans, health care clearinghouses, and most health care providers including pharmacies to safeguard the privacy of protected health information, including such information during its disposal. The investigation cited that CVS failed to implement adequate policies and procedures to reasonably safeguard health information during the disposal process. CVS failed to train employees on how to dispose
Nurses are able to work with a high level of integrity. As nurses, exposure to medical records happens on a daily basis. Nurses show their morals by only using these records to perform their job effectively. Laws like HIPPA exist to help prevent behavior like this from happening. My belief is the vast majority of nurse’s would not “snoop” without HIPPA.
I enjoyed reading your DQ 2 post this week, and I liked that we both talked about the EMTALA patient's Bill of Rights and the ACA. There is 22 patient Bill of rights and the professional ethical code of conduct lines up with the patient's bill of rights. The HIPPA law is complex, but just like the patient bill of right, the HIPPA law is in place to protect the patient identifiable health information. So, the HIPPA law goes one step further and helps to protect the patient's information for them. These laws help to protect the patient's rights and
If any employee cannot be trusted with private information about a patient, then the employee needs to be fired. A fine should also be charged on the employee who violates this law because the hospital would suffer tremendously wit business. As for the manager, it is their responsibility to watch the other employees and to make sure they are following the rules of HIPAA. I do not believe the manager of the organization should be fired, but there should be a penalty for not completing their job appropriately. The manager should be given a deduction of pay, or even attend a management class to remind them of what their duties
The Children's Medical Center of Dallas will pay a $3.2 million settlement—the sixth-largest in history—for failing to comply with HIPAA laws (Conns, 2017). The charged various offenses go back to 2009 when a BlackBerry was lost at Dallas-Fort Worth airplane terminal. It was conveying around 3,800 ePHI. It was known that the Children's Medical Center of Dallas utilized decoded cell phones, among other rebelliousness in endeavors to secure client wellbeing information. Also, another likely episode occurred in 2013 where a laptop with 2,462 patients’ records went missing. These situations violate the Title II Privacy Act, and Security Standards in which patient’s information was not securely kept and not complying with the Health and Human Services
Nurse are subject to various ethical and legal responsibilities in their professional role, such as to maintain patient’s privacy and confidentiality. Beginning in1893, nurses are taking the Nightingale Pledge to use all their power to maintain and elevate the standard of nursing profession and hold confidentiality in all personal matters committed to their keeping and all family affairs coming to their knowledge in the practice. That duty still continues today to protect the patient’s confidentiality. In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was first enacted by Congress to improve continuity of health insurance coverage, combat health care waste and fraud, and simplify the administration of health insurance.
I would agree with you that a set of Ethic guidelines or Code of Ethics should be developed to compliment HIPAA. Providing health information about anyone is such a violation of privacy, but adding the fact these people are in the public eye makes it even worse. Do you think the employees were paid to release the information? Do you think the employees who leaked the information should be fired or retrained?
The nurse kept answering Patient B that they needed her bed because she was no longer telemetry monitored and the bed was required to monitor another cardiac patient. Patient B, thinking that she was the first patient in that room and Patient A is no longer telemetry monitored also, responded by asking why can 't Patient A be move instead. The nurse abruptly replied, "Due to the possibility of Patient A having C-diff, we have to move you as a precautionary measure." This explanation occurred within the earshot of Patient A. Patient A became visibly upset and tearful, and vocalized that she believes her rights to privacy of her medical condition were violated. Patient B was moved to another room within the same unit. Subsequently, Patient A asked for another nurse to be assigned to her. However, to add fuel to the flame, in the process of providing bedside report to the replacement nurse, the outgoing nurse mentioned Patient A 's new cancer diagnosis in front of Patient A 's family. The patient, once again became visibly upset and tearful because she hadn 't had the chance to talk to her family about her terminal cancer diagnosis after speaking with her physician earlier that morning. On several occasions, the patient complained about her privacy being violated and threatened to file a lawsuit against the nurse and QMC for violating her rights. Subsequently, the charge nurse, nursing supervisor and floor manager were notified of the
To file a complaint against breach of HIPPA law is to contact office of Civil Rights. The office has the right to investigate allegations of the violations and to enforce the law which covers under the privacy rule. If the incident has occurred the affected person has to file a written and detailed complain by email, fax or hand written. This complaint must be send out within 180 days of the incident. According to HIPPA there shouldn’t be no harassment or retaliation against the person who files a complaint. There is major punishment for HIPPA violations and that includes heavy fines, deliberate violations and imprisonment. There are of course other punishments that HIPPA allows depends on the state level. Patients should always be careful about their personal
Paul , I like your post about health data breach. This is a violation of Hippa rights when data from a health institution is breached. Government officials always enforce strict regulations to prevent data from health institution to be vulgarized and breached. As always when there is a data breach there is also a Trust "breach ". Many PI's are at risks, reporting agencies are contacted and a good incident response plan must be
Like the malpractice and tort system, HIPAA and data breaches are an important legal issue that health organizations face. HIPAA was enacted in 1996 to ensure medical insurance portability and later, to improve standards for health information privacy and security (Showalter, 2012). As a result, it is currently extremely important that health organizations are in compliance with HIPAA regulations and ensure that patient records are protected; health organizations that fail to comply can face significant legal costs and penalties. In November 2010, Page and Fields (2011) report that six hospitals and a nursing home in California that failed to prevent unauthorized access to confidential patient information were levied a fine totaling $792,000 in November 2010. More recently, the General Hospital Corporation and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, which represent Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, had to pay the
As a patient advocate, we need to make sure that the patient understands HIPAA forms and ensure that they are easy to understand and use. As nurses, we are work to provide the best care we can for our patients. I believe that this article did a great job of laying out what HIPAA was and different aspects of the act that apply to the patients directly. The author does a good job of depicting situations that make patient confidentiality violated but also supplying ways to help avoid violations and successfully carry out HIPAA