The Protection Of Personalized Data

Many healthcare professionals and organizations have not been following the regulations set forth by HIPAA. Whenever violations of HIPAA’s privacy or security laws occur the organizations responsible must be held accountable resulting in a fine or penalty. Penalties provide incentive for organizations to guarantee patient privacy and security. Recently, certain people have failed to follow through with the laws and restrictions and were forced to accept the penalty. This paper will provide three real examples of such HIPAA violations as well as solutions or ways each violation could have been prevented.

All Americans require assurance and protection measures to shield their daily lives and healthcare laws, government regulations, and approaches do only that. The United States government manages these requirements with the expectation of enhancing the strength of the general population while building up the tools, alongside resources and programs to associate in the conveyance of medical care services. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) alongside the security law have affected preventive care services and how it is conveyed. HIPAA was intended to guarantee that the suitable systems were actualized to protect patient's data while getting care.

In the health care business, there are certain standards and laws that have been put in place to protect our patients and their personal health information. When a health care facility fails to protect their patient’s confidential information, the US Government may get involved and facilities may be forced to pay huge sums of money in fines, and risk damaging their reputation.

Healthcare technology has grown and evolved over time. With the conversion to electronic medical records and the creation of social media just to name a few, ensuring patient privacy is of the utmost importance for healthcare facilities in this day and age. In order for an organization to avoid hefty fines, it is imperative that a healthcare administrator maintains compliance with the standards and regulations associated with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This paper will provide a summary

Regulation placed upon the healthcare system only seek to improve safety and security of the patients we care for. The enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and the enactment of Meaningful Use Act the United States government has set strict regulations on the security of health information and has allotted for stricter penalties for non-compliance. The advancement of electronic health record (EHR) systems has brought greater fluidity and compliance with healthcare but has also brought greater security risk of protected information. In order to ensure compliance with government standards organizations must adapt

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed by congress in 1996, and helps to ensure the privacy and security of Electronic Health Records (EHR's). By following the rules and regulations set forth under HIPAA, we can ensure the safety of patients' EHR's. We are responsible for protecting patients' records, and there are many measures we can take in order do this. Firstly, we must always keep patients' health information private. This means no discussing the records with people that are not authorized to know, and even then, we should only disclose the minimum necessary amount of information possible. For covered entities, we must designate a privacy and security officer to ensure the privacy

A process within healthcare that has changed as a result of HIPAA is medical information security. The laws have been tightened more. Privacy audits can be done with covered entities if they have had complaints, or even if there have been none. In the event of high-profile incidents, privacy audits can be done also. The privacy rule has also changes as a result. The privacy rule affects 3 different situations in which private health information is handled, use, disclosure, and request. Because of the minimum necessary standard, healthcare providers and covered entities have to limit the use, disclosure, and requests to only the amount of information necessary to complete this.

During this research, there has been a collection of data that had been connected to the instances of HIPAA violations within the United States. There are various cases that have been reported through patients and employees where very personal medical information has been exposed unlawfully for personal gain. These cases have not only put a company at reputational risk. But these cases can also place a patient and or healthcare company in a terrible financial stipulation. This thesis will include a series of charts and tables that describe the fluctuation of such cases involving different examples of HIPAA violations. Not only will there be data of these instances but there will be illustrations of how both patients and healthcare employees exemplify HIPAA violations. These cases will be verified from an external and internal evaluation. Suggestive protocol will be demonstrated to guide one along to ensure the possibility of another case of HIPAA violation is prevented. Protocols and examples are being credited by diverse information.

Even though hipaa violations are an important standard in preventing many individuals from causing several breaches of information from getting out, it is important to work on a strategies within several health care organizations that will work with the privacy rules regarding violation laws. “Jill Granger & Laura Cataldo (2013) reports When working in the healthcare setting, it is important to consult with the guidelines established by one's institution and to participate in any training programs to insure that the appropriate steps are being taken to maintain privacy. There are also a variety of additional resources available from the federal government and professional organizations to assist in the training process that may be especially

In his Modern Healthcare article, “HIPPA Hurdles”, author Joe Carlson exclaims his concern for the new rules set in HIPPA that will be put into place this month. HIPPA is a set of measures, and laws, that healthcare provider’s take to ensure they are “safeguarding” patient’s health information (Carlson 2013). Carlson is speaking up for most healthcare providers when he describes his distaste for these new provisions in the Omnibus HIPPA Final Rule. The main issue in these provisions states that providers will have to “Honor requests from patients to withhold sensitive records from insurance companies if the bills are paid out of pocket.” (Carlson 2013). He asserts that the reason this will become an issue is because no one has the technology to simply safeguard one hospital or doctor visit from insurers, and that their own technological programs compile everything together and make this request difficult. While this new rule may be helping out patients, it will be causing more hardships and possible punishments when the healthcare providers forget or are not able to do as the patient asks. By grabbing his audience’s attention through appealing to our logic and emotions, Carlson does succeed in informing us about these new concerns.

Leadership in innovation in healthcare is no different, as its initiative is to progress while maintaining strict confidentiality and maintaining an overall safe and trustworthy establishment. Healthcare laws are issued to help safeguard patient information creating a moral medical healthcare environment. Healthcare laws secure patient information and medical history and it has helped against fraudulent practices such as identity theft. Knowledge and practice of such laws strengthen leadership. For example, HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy rule was created as a way to secure patient identifiable healthcare information and limiting its disclosures for legitimate purpose use only. To explain, the HIPAA Privacy Rule is an arrangement of selected models to secure the protection of patients' health records as these guidelines give patients access to their health record and control over how their own health record are utilized and disclosed (2015). In any event, the Privacy Rule addresses a guideline for understanding situations where disclosure can be given without patient consent. For example, court proceedings, insurance billing, and

The Health and Human Services (HHS) settled a case with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBST) for $1.5 million for violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and security rules. There are security issues with BCBST in regard to confidentiality, integrity, availability, and privacy. There are also security requirement by HIPAA which could have prevent the security issue if it has been enforced. There are correction actions taken by BCBST which were efficient and some may have not been adequate. There are HIPAA security requirements and safeguards organization need to implement to mitigate the security risk in terms of administrative, technical, and physical safeguards.

The department of Health and Human Services protects and guides the health and well being of individuals here in America (Thacker, 2014). They fulfill these duties providing Americans with adequate and efficient health and human services and monitoring services designed to increase the efficiency of care in the health system (Thacker, 2014). One of the services being monitored by the department of Health and Human Services is the electronic health record system, which carries private and vital information of patient’s health record enabling all eligible participating health workers access to these records (Thacker, 2014). A breach of the protective health information of patients in a health organization creates chaos as these are against the health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA) law (Thacker, 2014). Hence, measure will have to be put in place to determine what caused the breach and how to rectify it to ensure the breach never happens again (Thacker, 2014).

The rapid changes in technology over the past few decades has left the healthcare industry ill-prepared to operate in today’s environment. Most substantial protections of sensitive consumer information has come as a result of federal regulation, most notably in 1996 with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and 2009 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Protection of information in the healthcare industry has lagged behind all other industries, perhaps because the records aren’t financial in nature or sensitive government information. Implementing simple steps for many organizations may be enough to limit the vast majority of breaches, although a layered, comprehensive security approach should be the ultimate goal for companies.

The securing of data and information is more important in today’s post-industrialized economy, for many reasons. For example, businesses continue to decentralize, in addition to, outsourcing products and-or services. In essence, outsourcing of products and-or services by contractual agreements with third-party vendors can substantially reduce cost of operations, therefore, enabling increase(s) in profits and revenue. Therefore, manufactures, companies, and businesses constantly attempt to gain a competitive edge within their respected market by utilizing innovative technologies for business, information technology (IT) and information security (IS) processes.