Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Case Study
However, with Hippocrates came the Hippocratic method and the Hippocratic oath, which are both still heavily utilized today. Roy Porter described both of these well as “ humoralism which dominated classical medicine and formed its heritage lay in its comprehensive explanatory scheme, which drew upon bold archetypal contrast” (Porter, 30) and “This humane disposition demonstrated the physician's devotion to his art rather than fame or fortune, and consoled anxious patients.” (Porter, 30). These ideas are prevalent because we still use them today. However, today we focus more on “the appropriate behavior that doctors ought to adopt with their patients” (Bynum, 23). When a physician knows the in and outs of a person’s daily habits and health it
…show more content…
puts the patient in a vulnerable position, thus the least we as health care providers can do it to make sure that what they do trust is with knowing is kept a secret.
Not only is knowing that we as healthcare providers are trusted with privileged knowledge but how are we going to ensure that everyone in the medical community strives to recognize the importance of protecting privacy?
The answer in a democratic state like the United States of America is protection under federal law. Before we had the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability of 1996 the way that health information was protected was mainly under federal and state constitutional law. For example, all citizens have the right to their privacy. But I think many people would tell you that life is entirely different in today’s clinical setting than it was thirty years ago. I doubt hospital administrators cared too much about accessing files that an employee had no right to access or two physicians discussing a patient in the presence of a third party that is not that particular patient. This change is mainly due to the advances that we have made in technology within the last few decades. We have been able to create digital files and used less paper and space in the process. However, with these new advances come new challenges such as the hacking of computer systems and having access to all health information in these systems. Thus, we now have the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability of 1996, which seeks to protect the privacy of Health information amongst individuals in clinical care and research under a federal mandate. To specify, the Common Rule has been primarily used for research, which focuses on protecting individual from physical and mental harm in clinical trials. This is very similar the Nuremberg Trials that gave way to the Nuremberg Code, which also ensures that individuals who do participate in experimental procedures are well aware of the consequences of the experiment and are mentally fit to give consent to participate in an experimental
trial.
puts the patient in a vulnerable position, thus the least we as health care providers can do it to make sure that what they do trust is with knowing is kept a secret.
Not only is knowing that we as healthcare providers are trusted with privileged knowledge but how are we going to ensure that everyone in the medical community strives to recognize the importance of protecting privacy?
The answer in a democratic state like the United States of America is protection under federal law. Before we had the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability of 1996 the way that health information was protected was mainly under federal and state constitutional law. For example, all citizens have the right to their privacy. But I think many people would tell you that life is entirely different in today’s clinical setting than it was thirty years ago. I doubt hospital administrators cared too much about accessing files that an employee had no right to access or two physicians discussing a patient in the presence of a third party that is not that particular patient. This change is mainly due to the advances that we have made in technology within the last few decades. We have been able to create digital files and used less paper and space in the process. However, with these new advances come new challenges such as the hacking of computer systems and having access to all health information in these systems. Thus, we now have the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability of 1996, which seeks to protect the privacy of Health information amongst individuals in clinical care and research under a federal mandate. To specify, the Common Rule has been primarily used for research, which focuses on protecting individual from physical and mental harm in clinical trials. This is very similar the Nuremberg Trials that gave way to the Nuremberg Code, which also ensures that individuals who do participate in experimental procedures are well aware of the consequences of the experiment and are mentally fit to give consent to participate in an experimental
trial.