Medical records and their contents have been an important issue concerning privacy for physicians and their patients. A health care reform bill which passed legislation in 1996 is known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) had a new rule put into place in 2000, which requires health care physicians and insurance providers to put into place new procedures that would guard patient health information ("Patient Privacy and Confidentiality", 2013).
Health information opponents has question the delivery and handling of patients electronic health records by health care organization and workers. The laws and regulations that set the framework protecting a user’s health information has become a major factor in how information is used and disclosed. The ability to share a patient document using Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is a critical component in the United States effort to show transparency and quality of healthcare records while protecting patient privacy. In 1996, under President Clinton administration, the US “Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)” established national standards for the safeguard of certain health information. As a result, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 or (HIPAA) was established. HIPAA security standards required healthcare providers to ensure confidentiality and integrity of individual health information. This also included insurance administration and insurance portability. According to Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), an organization must guarantee the integrity, confidentiality, and security of sensitive patient data (Heckle & Lutters, 2011).
This nurse believes that if the appropriate monitoring of safety and security is implemented to protect confidentiality and quality of care that information technology (IT) in healthcare with continue to have a positive impact on patient care and outcomes. This nurse also believes that proper extensive training on these sophisticated systems is very important to patient safety and efficiency of care. With all the new advances in healthcare emerging it will be challenging but can only get better.
The concept of risk management is relatively new, as hospitals look to prevent hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), falls, injuries, and other forms of preventable harm, rather than reacting once harm has already taken place. Before this concept became a best practice, most health organizations relied on malpractice and liability insurance to protect against losses and mitigate the effects of accidents and poor patient outcomes (Colorado State University-Global Campus, 2014). Today, risk management is an integral facet of a healthcare facility’s business practice in preventing risks, ensuring regulatory compliance, minimizing financial damage, and preserving its reputation in the community. Although most large
The use of computers and information systems in healthcare industry is quite a good move in the right direction. Vast amounts of information are stored, data is sorted according to categories and can easily be retrieved, and patients are diagnosed effectively and accurately. Uniform codes and standards are created which makes the system universally acceptable. Most hospitals and healthcare facilities are focused on treating their clients and saving their lives and in the process forget about adhering to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act which mandates protection of electronic health information since its implementation in 1996.
Security helps the organization meet its business objectives or mission by protecting its physical and financial resources, reputation, legal position, employees, and other tangible and intangible assets through the selection and application of appropriate safeguards. Businesses should establish roles and responsibilities of all personnel and staff members. However, a Chief Information Officer should be appointed to direct an organization’s day to day management of information assets. Supporting roles are performed by the service providers and include systems operations, whose personnel design and operate the computer systems. Each team member must be held accountable in ensuring all of the rules and policies are being followed, as well as, understanding their roles, responsibilities and functions. Organizations information processing systems are vulnerable to many threats that can inflict various types of damage that can result in significant losses (Harris, 2014). Losses can come from actions from trusted employees that defraud the system, outside hackers, or from careless data entry. The major threat to information protection is error and omissions that data entry personnel, users, system operators and programmers make. To better protect business information resources, organizations should conduct a risk analysis to see what
The Security Rule of the HIPAA law affects technology the most in a Healthcare or Human Service organization. The Security Rule deals specifically with Electronic Protected Health Information (EPHI). The EPHI has three types of security safeguards that are mandatory to meet compliance with HIPAA regulations. Administrative, physical, and technical. There is constant concern of different kinds of devices and tools because of their vulnerability: laptops; personal computers of the home; library and public workstations; USB Flash Drives and email, to name a few. These items are easily accessible for those attempting to breach security. Workers of the healthcare area have complet...
As a nurse, we are expected to be knowledgeable about our patients’ care and practice. However, some mistakenly disregard the importance of the other main priority we need to acknowledge. The Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) should indisputably be secured. Technology is rapidly increasing which benefits our nursing practice and especially the treatment for the ones we take care of. Computer software prevents medical errors and easily accessible though other agencies. The risks of data breaching can happen in any healthcare facility due to careless acts and misuse of information. HIPAA should constantly be apart of our work ethics. HIPAA regulations are on our data security to prevent breaching from happening by having security codes and
Health systems are responsible for notifying patients of their privacy practices, as well as ensuring that the proper safeguards have been put into place to minimize the unauthorized access or disclosure of patient information; Health systems are also required to provide adequate training to all employees regarding HIPAA regulations as well as ensure that any business associates have contractual agreements regarding the use of and disclosure of patient health
The Healthy Body Wellness Center requires an Information Security Management System (ISMS), in order to implement a plan to maintain and audit the company 's information system security objectives. This necessitated outlining the scope of the ISMS plan as well as an evaluation of the risk assessment conducted by We Test Everything LLC (WTE). We Test Everything LLC was contracted by the Healthy Body Wellness Center 's (HBWC) Office of Grants Giveaway (OGG) to provide a risk assessment of the Small Hospital Grant Tracking System (SHGTS).
It is right of a patient to be safe at health care organization. Patient comes to the hospital for the treatment not to get another disease. Patient safety is the most important issue for health care organizations. Patient safety events cost of thousands of deaths and millions of dollars an-nually. Even though the awareness of patient safety is spreading worldwide but still we have to accomplish many things to achieve safe environment for patients in the hospitals. Proper admin-istrative changes are required to keep health care organization safe. We need organizational changes, effective leadership, strong health care policies and effective health care laws to make patients safer.
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.
This report aim to explain how is achieved risk control through strategies and through security management of information.
Implement physical security: - “Physical security protects people, data, equipment, systems, facilities and company assets” (Harris,
Pham, Thu. "Components of a HIPAA Compliant IT Contingency Plan." OnLINE TECH. Online Tech., 19 June 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. .