Protected Health Information
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Instructor
Date
Protected Health Information
Introduction
Proper understanding of Protected Health Information (PIH) is a compulsory requirement in health care provision. PIH is an essential element of the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act. Health facilities are responsible for protecting health Information to ensure that any patient’s health record is kept private and secured. The advancement of technological applications and social media platforms for tracking patients’ progress has resulted in Protected Health Information’s jeopardy. Health workers, such as nurses and physicians, need to appropriately use social media to avoid compromising patients’ privacy. The paper describes the appropriate social media use in healthcare.
Security, Privacy, and Confidentially Laws
A patient seeking treatment in hospitals share personal accounts and information relating to their ailment. The information transmitted is considered confidential and private and must be protected by relevant providers (Kafali, Jones, Petruso, Williams, and Singh 2017). The information is usually taken during patient identification, diagnosis, treatment, laboratory results, and progress records. Health workers working on the patient have access to the data for treatment and administrative purposes only. The information must not be released or leaked to other parties unless with the permission of the patient. The patient also has a legal right to obtain or amend information on the record.
Access to patient data in electrical health information should be controlled and limited to specifically authorized individuals. Passwords provide security and prohibit unauthorized personnel from accessing patient information (Rutledge, Kott, Schweickert, Poston, Fowler and Haney 2017). For example, a physician in charge of a cancer patient should allocate the patient a nurse and patient caregiver and assign a password to the system to prevent information leakage.
The organization should use more advanced technology for security like biometrics, such as eye recognition and fingerprints to access the software. Hospital management and discipline are responsible for ensuring that staff members do not breach private and confidential regulations.
According to the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, hospital administration and leaders are held accountable for health practitioners’ actions in the organization (Blanke and McGrady 2016). Protection measures that safeguard the health information of clients should be authorized to relevant clinicians only. National Institute of Standards and Technology and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act develop and mandate information security guidelines (Kafali, Jones, Petruso, Williams and Singh 2017). The institutions are in charge of preserving patient information, Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA). The HIPAA Security Rule states that individual information in electronic health records should be covered and protected while allowing healthcare providers to access better patient outcomes.
Importance of Interdisciplinary Collaboration
The application of technology in nursing and healthcare has several advantages. Nursing informatics, in this case, electrical health information, has enabled interdisciplinary medical workers to be actively involved in decision making (Bersani, Fuller, Garabedian, Espares, Mlaver, Businger, and Schnipper 2020). With technological development, nurses have no option but to be well conversant with technology. EHR provides an interdisciplinary team to have better communication with healthcare workers on specific issues affecting a patient. Nurses and the multidisciplinary team have a role in preventing medical errors using EHR. The system gives clinicians alerts and reminders on particular procedures, such as drug administration to diabetic patients.
Health workers must safeguard sensitive electronic health information collectively. The teamwork ensures that communication among health providers is consistent and relevant. Proper communication reduces the risk of medical error, leading to a patient’s security violation. Maintaining a collaborative mission to safeguard patients’ health records minimizes the transfer of information to unauthorized persons. Collaboration to protect sensitive electrical details ensures that the data is used for the intended purpose only.
Evidence-Based Strategies to Mitigate Risks
Health organizations should employ proper safety measures to protect sensitive patient information. According to HIPAA, health facilities should conduct risk assessments regularly to detect and contain security violation of the systems. Hospital staff should undergo frequent training and education on information technology and the importance of securing the systems.
The facility should ensure that data is regularly encrypted, which would make it impossible to access without a code or password. An alternative approach to mitigate risks to patients and medics is to avoid isolating sensitive information from the rest of the medical record instead of increasing the entire electrical health information’s security. The approach safeguards patients’ medical information and ensures the data contains all available information required by medical providers.
Besides, medical organizations should develop patients’ rights and regulations that clarify patient and clinicians’ relationship. For instance, patients should be given a contact number for providers who are in charge of ensuring a lack of security breach. The organization and management team should change access to the electrical health information system for medics who transfer to different departments or take on additional duties. Employees that have been evicted from the premises should also be excluded from accessing the system immediately to prevent the risk of patients’ information leakage.
Positive and Negative Social Media Practices
Medical providers can use social media platforms can improve patient outcomes, patient and nurse education, and patient health programs. However, the tool can lead to potential risks to patient security, privacy, and confidentiality if not used appropriately. Proper guidelines should be established and implemented in health facilities to reduce breaches of patient’s confidential information.
Healthcare practitioners could use social media to provide patient care to patients in the comfort of their homes. The method is most relevant to patients living with chronic ailments like asthma, diabetes, and hypertension. Nursing practitioners could use the tool to monitor a patient’s lifestyle behavior and advise them on better ways of taking care of their health by changing unhealthy lifestyles.
Healthcare providers could potentially face severe penalties for HIPAA violation of patient’s information. The HIPAA Privacy regulation prohibits disclosure of Protective Health Information on any social media platform. Medical providers should use social media with caution to avoid termination of their contracts or serving a jail sentence. Social media violation includes: Sharing images of visible patients in a health facility, posting photos of patients without their consent, and describing patients’ conditions to public members.
Breaching of Protected Health Information results in profound implications. Healthcare providers should be aware of the HIPAA policies and regulations regarding social media to avoid preventable consequences and ensure patient security. Staff members in healthcare should be properly annually trained on how to conduct themselves on social media platforms.
Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices
Reference
Blanke, S. J., & McGrady, E. (2016). When it comes to securing patient health information from breaches, your best medicine is a dose of prevention: A cybersecurity risk assessment checklist. Journal of Healthcare Risk Management, 36(1), 14-24.
De Martino, I., D’Apolito, R., McLawhorn, A. S., Fehring, K. A., Sculco, P. K., & Gasparini, G. (2017). Social media for patients: benefits and drawbacks. Current reviews in musculoskeletal medicine, 10(1), 141-145.
Bersani, K., Fuller, T. E., Garabedian, P., Espares, J., Mlaver, E., Businger, A., … & Schnipper, J. L. (2020). Use, perceived usability, and barriers to wfimplementing a patient safety dashboard integrated within a vendor EHR. Applied clinical informatics, 11(01), 034-045.
Kafali, Ö., Jones, J., Petruso, M., Williams, L., & Singh, M. P. (2017, May). How good is a security policy against real breaches? A HIPAA case study. In 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (pp. 530-540). IEEE.
Ronquillo, J. G., Erik Winterholler, J., Cwikla, K., Szymanski, R., & Levy, C. (2018). Health IT, hacking, and cybersecurity: national trends in data breaches of protected health information. JAMIA open, 1(1), 15-19.
Rutledge, C. M., Kott, K., Schweickert, P. A., Poston, R., Fowler, C., & Haney, T. S. (2017). Telehealth and eHealth in nurse practitioner training: current perspectives. Advances in medical education and practice, 8, 399.
TOPIC:
Protected Health Information (PHI): Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices
Prepare a 2-page interprofessional staff update on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care.
As you begin to consider the assessment, it would be an excellent choice to complete the Breach of Protected Health Information (PHI) activity. The will support your success with the assessment by creating the opportunity for you to test your knowledge of potential privacy, security, and confidentiality violations of protected health information. The activity is not graded and counts towards course engagement.
Health care providers today must develop their skills in mitigating risks to their patients and themselves related to patient information. At the same time, they need to be able distinguish between effective and ineffective uses of social media in health care.
This assessment will require you to develop a staff update for the interprofessional team to encourage team members to protect the privacy, confidentiality, and security of patient information.
Demonstration of Proficiency
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:
• Competency 1: Describe nurses’ and the interdisciplinary team’s role in informatics with a focus on electronic health information and patient care technology to support decision making.
o Describe the security, privacy, and confidentially laws related to protecting sensitive electronic health information that govern the interdisciplinary team.
o Explain the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to safeguard sensitive electronic health information.
• Competency 2: Implement evidence-based strategies to effectively manage protected health information.
o Identify evidence-based approaches to mitigate risks to patients and health care staff related to sensitive electronic health information.
o Develop a professional, effective staff update that educates interprofessional team members about protecting the security, privacy, and confidentiality of patient data, particularly as it pertains to social media usage.
• Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly communication to facilitate use of health information and patient care technologies.
o Follow APA style and formatting guidelines for citations and references.
o Create a clear, concise, well-organized, and professional staff update that is generally free from errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Preparation
To successfully prepare to complete this assessment, complete the following:
• Review the infographics on protecting PHI provided in the resources for this assessment, or find other infographics to review. These infographics serve as examples of how to succinctly summarize evidence-based information.
o Analyze these infographics, and distill them into five or six principles of what makes them effective. As you design your interprofessional staff update, apply these principles. Note: In a staff update, you will not have all the images and graphics that an infographic might contain. Instead, focus your analysis on what makes the messaging effective.
• Select from any of the following options, or a combination of options, the focus of your interprofessional staff update:
o Social media best practices.
o What not to do: Social media.
o Social media risks to patient information.
o Steps to take if a breach occurs.
• Conduct independent research on the topic you have selected in addition to reviewing the suggested resources for this assessment. This information will serve as the source(s) of the information contained in your interprofessional staff update.
Instructions
In this assessment, assume you are a nurse in an acute care, community, school, nursing home, or other health care setting. Before your shift begins, you scroll through Facebook and notice that a coworker has posted a photo of herself and a patient on Facebook. The post states, “I am so happy Jane is feeling better. She is just the best patient I’ve ever had, and I am excited that she is on the road to recovery.”
You have recently completed your annual continuing education requirements at work and realize this is a breach of your organization’s social media policy. Your organization requires employees to immediately report such breaches to the privacy officer to ensure the post is removed immediately and that the nurse responsible receives appropriate corrective action.
You follow appropriate organizational protocols and report the breach to the privacy officer. The privacy officer takes swift action to remove the post. Due to the severity of the breach, the organization terminates the nurse.
Based on this incident’s severity, your organization has established a task force with two main goals:
• Educate staff on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care.
• Prevent confidentiality, security, and privacy breaches.
The task force has been charged with creating a series of interprofessional staff updates on the following topics:
• Social media best practices.
• What not to do: Social media.
• Social media risks to patient information.
• Steps to take if a breach occurs.
You are asked to select one of the topics, or a combination of several topics, and create the content for a staff update containing a maximum of two content pages. When distributed to interprofessional team members, the update will consist of one double-sided page.
The task force has asked team members assigned to the topics to include the following content in their updates in addition to content on their selected topic(s):
• What is protected health information (PHI)?
o Be sure to include essential HIPAA information.
• What are privacy, security, and confidentiality?
o Define and provide examples of privacy, security, and confidentiality concerns related to the use of the technology in health care.
o Explain the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to safeguard sensitive electronic health information.
• What evidence relating to social media usage and PHI do interprofessional team members need to be aware of? For example:
o How many nurses have been terminated for inappropriate social media usage in the United States?
o What types of sanctions have health care organizations imposed on interdisciplinary team members who have violated social media policies?
o What have been the financial penalties assessed against health care organizations for inappropriate social media usage?
o What evidence-based strategies have health care organizations employed to prevent or reduce confidentiality, privacy, and security breaches, particularly related to social media usage?
Notes
• Your staff update is limited to two double-spaced content pages. Be selective about the content you choose to include in your update so that you are able to meet the page length requirement. Include need-to-know information. Leave out nice-to-know information.
• Many times people do not read staff updates, do not read them carefully, or do not read them to the end. Ensure your staff update piques staff members’ interest, highlights key points, and is easy to read. Avoid overcrowding the update with too much content.
• Also supply a separate reference page that includes 2–3 peer-reviewed and 1–2 non-peer-reviewed resources (for a total of 3–5 resources) to support the staff update content.
Additional Requirements
• Written communication: Ensure the staff update is free from errors that detract from the overall message.
• Submission length: Maximum of two double-spaced content pages.
• Font and font size: Use Times New Roman, 12-point.
• Citations and references: Provide a separate reference page that includes 2–3 current, peer-reviewed and 1–2 current, non-peer-reviewed in-text citations and references (total of 3–5 resources) that support the staff update’s content. Current mean no older than 5 years.
• APA format: Be sure your citations and references adhere to APA format. Consult the APA Style and Format page for an APA refresher.
Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices