Privacy In Health Care

Maintaining the privacy of health patient records is extremely important in the health care industry. Every healthcare provider in different areas of the health care field obtain prerequisite training in maintaining patient privacy and have an obligation to ensure patient information is kept private. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ensure health insurance is portable and protection for privacy of patient medical information (Henderson, 2009). A requirement of the healthcare industry involves health care providers and employees understanding the principles of HIPPA (Henderson, 2009). When health care employees understand the rules and regulations of HIPPA, he or she will be able to maintain the privacy of every
patient. Health care providers are always responsible for safeguarding patient’s medical information. HIPPA requires physicians to ensure that he or she is protecting the confidentiality and security of patient’s information. HIPPA also involves using standard formats when transactions or claims are submitted electronically (American Medical Association, 1995-2010). As of September 23, 2009, new regulations require that every physician who is covered by HIPAA should notify patients of breaches in security that involves unsecured patient information (American Medical Association, 1995-2010). Additionally, these requirements are implied to any obligations executed by the HIPAA privacy, state laws, and Security Rules (American Medical Association, 1995-2010).
Article Issues and Population Affects
Article Issues
In this article, the issues are maintaining patient’s confidentiality, HIPAA laws, and patient’s privacy (Henderson, 2009). Several issues can arise from patient medical information not being kept private such as misuse of information; birth date, address, social security number, and phone numbers in patient records could result in identity theft (Henderson, 2009). Other issues include medical information falling into the wrong hands, clients suffering emotional distress from disclosing of certain sensitive, personal, or private information; sexual orientation, and release of infections or sexually transmitted diseases information (Henderson, 2009). Workplaces and insurance companies can also abuse information obtained from patient’s health records (Henderson, 2009). Deceitful companies and insurance companies can use private information improperly to investigate employees and put limitations on health care coverage (Henderson, 2009).
Even though individual’s personal information has to be shared with other organizations, law enforcement, and pharmaceutical agencies, distribution of this important information has restrictions that should only apply to sources that needs to know patients information. If someone needs to know individuals medical information, he or she should inform him or her about what they need and have a consent form sign by that person before it can be released. State laws are being implement increases of penalties for violations of client or patient health information. Patients and clients who receive medical care should feel confident that his or her privacy is kept and maintain confidential (Henderson, 2009). However, patients and clients are allowed to view his or her personal medical record.
Population Affects
Confidentiality and privacy of patient’s health records affects every individual living in today’s society no matter what his or her race, nationality, age, or gender.
Every patient who has visited a health care provider, have been affected by someone breaching his or her confidentiality and not maintaining the privacy of their medical records. Even individuals who are celebrities have incidents where his or her medical information is accessed by unauthorized individuals. HITECH Act provisional rule of breach notification states that healthcare organizations must report breaches that affect 500 or more individuals to federal authorities, the media, and persons affected within 60 days (Henderson, 2009). For example, some insurance companies may consider taking care of breaches promptly by sending out bulletins to report information breaches and encrypted data to state authorities with five calendar days (Anderson, 2010). Separate data breach notification statue recommends that every business report breaches of computerized personal information without any delays. The Health Net breach incident in 2009 involves the loss of an unencrypted portable disk drive (Anderson, 2010). The disk was holding records for about 500,000 enrollees in Connecticut and more than 1.5 million consumers nationwide (Anderson, 2010). This drive included 28 million scanned, unencrypted pages of important documents; appeals, claims, grievances, membership forms (Anderson, 2010). The information in the
documents included names addresses, bank account information, and Social Security numbers (Anderson, 2010).
Facts about Privacy
Insurance companies are able to transfer information between each other under certain circumstances as a result of health care records becoming computerized with the advent of HIPPA (Henderson, 2009). Therefore, electronic records are vulnerable to threats, such as computer viruses, hackers, and technical malfunction. Consequently, the health care industry has to develop ways and take precautions for protecting electronic records.
Ethical and Legal Issues
Ethical Issues
According to Henderson (2009), ethical issues for celebrities involve tabloids willing to pay numerous amount of money for privileged information.
Other issues include healthcare providers answering the phone, having conversations in public settings, threats of selling celebrities stories to the news media, and accessing patients health information and electronic medical records regardless of he or she is a celebrity or not (Henderson, 2009). The article also states that “the state public health authorities in July released findings that more than 60 employees at the UCLA Medical Center improperly accessed patient’s records” (Henderson, 2009). As a result, one former employees sold celebrity medical records to the news channels. Lists of victimized celebrities will continue to grow, however emphasizing these incidents should dramatize and demonstrate the type of damages that can result from patient privacy not being
maintained.