Health Information Privacy Essay

While advancements in technology have positively impacted the nursing field, it has also created huge concerns with patient privacy and sharing of protected health information leading to detrimental effects to patients and their families. Indeed, technology is changing the face of healthcare with positive innovations to reduce medication errors and documentation errors. However, technology at our fingertips has created immense concerns with sharing of protected health information of patients via social media, email and other means of communication via technology. This paper addresses why I feel the advancement of technology has numerous deficits that need more research and implementation of new laws and policies to safeguard the

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a set of national standards created for the protection of health information; it is also known as a “Privacy Rule”. This rule was employed in 1996 by the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to address the use and disclosure of an individual’s health information as well as the standards for the individual’s privacy rights to understand and control the manner in which their information is used.

The article, Keep Privacy in Health Records, was written by the Monitor's Editorial Board on February 2, 2009. It condemns some of the provisions of a House Bill that was passed by the ACLU and other privacy groups. According to this bill, data encryption would ensure that authorized persons are barred from accessing patient’s health records in the institution. Audit trails are also crucial in determining and tracking who accessed the records, at what time and what type of information did he/she get. Lastly, the patients should be allowed to see their records to improve their notification and strengthen enforcement in health institutions. However, despite these initiatives to improve accountability and confidentiality of patient’s records in most institutions, the board believes that the bill has not solved some of the privacy issues as far as patient health records are concerned.

This particular goal mainly focused on privacy of the individual. Invasion to privacy is strictly restricted and all the health information about the patient should be used with their consent only. Moreover every health system manager have aware about legal implications currently in practice to protect privacy.

Identity theft has always been in the back of my mind whenever I use my debit card but I wasn’t too concerned about my health information until I learned about HIPAA. It is a very important set of rules and standards that protects our privacy.

Patient privacy has been a major concern for patients and medical staff for many years. Patient privacy goes hand in hand with HIPPA and the privacy rule. This protects the privacy of any person of all health information (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010). Even with this a concern for many, a study conducted by Zogby Internation studies more than 2000 adults to obtain their views on patient privacy. This studied determined that individuals would rather have individual choice and control over personal health information instead of others (Patient Privacy Rights, 2010).

1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPPA) there is protection personal health information, including the first comprehensive federal privacy regulations. The federal privacy rules covers health information maintained in paper or electronically. This also applies to verbal communication of medical information. It was intended to increase the number of Americans with health care delivery more efficient and health insurance.

Privacy of health information has become an area of emphasis across the healthcare industry. It is important to understand what data is protected under federal regulations, how it can be shared, and how to prevent any accidental exposure of protected data. It is possible that data that should be protected can be exposed without anyone even realizing a violation has occurred. Exposure of protected healthcare data can result in medical identity theft and is therefore a very important and hot topic. The security and privacy of healthcare data is necessary to ensure consumer confidence in the healthcare industry and to prevent medical identity theft.

Prior to the Information Age, medical records were all stored in folders in secure filing cabinets at doctor’s offices, hospitals, or health departments. The information within the folders was confidential, and shared solely amongst the patient and physician. Today these files are fragmented across multiple treatment sites due to the branching out of specialty centers such as urgent care centers, magnetic resonance imaging, outpatient surgical centers, and other diagnostic centers. Today’s ability to store medical records electronically has made it possible to easily send these files from one location to another. However, the same technology which can unify the fragmented pieces of a patient’s medical record has the ability to also create

Privacy is one of the fundamental policies and principles that should be adhered to by each professional nurse (Cileska, 2001). In addition, confidentiality is another equally important principle that should be observed by each of the nurses in the nursing profession. The reason for emphasising on confidentiality and privacy is meant to preserve the nursing ethics and to protect the privacy of the patients (Dickenson, 2004). Since most of the diseases are not meant to be exposed to the public, it should be the responsibility of each nurse to ensure that all patient information remains private and confidential this gives hope and trust to the

Privacy and confidentiality are basic rights in our society. Safeguarding those rights, with respect to an individual’s personal health information, is our ethical and legal obligation as health care providers. Doing so in today’s health care environment is increasingly challenging (OJIN, 2005).

The first principle is that with very few exceptions, health care information about a consumer should be disclosed for health purposes only. The information should be easy to use for those purposes, and very difficult to use otherwise. The second principle is that technical security safeguards be maintained for computerized data. Including audit trails that identify who accessed the data and the prosecution against anyone who used the records for illegal or improper purposes. The third principle is consumer access. The patient should have ability to access his or her records and know others that also have access to them. Patients should be aware of the laws, regulations, and policies that protect their information. The fourth policy is defined as accountability, which is of relation to security and consumer control. Fines and imprisonment are required to those who breach security of personal health information. The final policy is public responsibility. Legislation must be balanced between personal, private interests and national priorities of public health, research, and law enforcement. The excessive flow of information, without patient authorization, is essential to the immediate discovery and investigation in public health crisis. AHIMA's acknowledgement of these five principles are abroad outline of a sensible public policy that balances personal privacy

In light of available security measures and their widespread acceptance within the information security community, there is no excuse for healthcare organizations to fail in fulfilling their duty to protect personal patient information. Guaranteeing the confidentiality and privacy of data in healthcare information is crucial in safeguarding the data of patients as there should be a legal responsibility to protect medical records from unauthorized access.

Personal data is quickly becoming a commodity in today's high technology world. This information is used by banks, investment and brokerage companies, credit card merchants, government agencies (local, state and federal), and consumer product-based companies. Most people probably don't realize the amount of information that's shared between companies, or how often it's done. Many companies sell and share customer data to help sell products and find out what new products they should produce. Other uses include gathering information about inventory levels to help better determine what types of products are bought at which store, when and how often. This can be used for inventory and production, to make sure that the store (or

Privacy laws are established because people have a right to privacy, to an extent. For many years people have argued over their privacy rights, from online videos, to people spying on them, even people stealing internet. People think that they should be completely secluded from others seeing what they’re doing, but in all reality, there’s no stopping people from seeing what you are doing. With more people using the flaws within our media and lives, we as a society must come to accept the fact that people are watching us.