Essay Example on Secure Healthcare Data Sharing: Benefits & Ethics

Introduction

Healthcare organizations need to understand the benefits of secure healthcare data sharing and the way they could participate in securing such classified information. There is a wide range of interests involved in this professional process in ethical healthcare practice that the entire system should implement to improve high-quality healthcare. For instance, chronic disease registries, information on substance abuse, large-scale analytics, epidemiology, or disease tracking are all vital potential uses for data sharing. Data sharing is also essential in the interoperation routine in the emergency department and genetic studies. Other than clinical and patient-facing applications, the ethical exchange of data in medical practices is necessary because it ensures the sharing of best healthcare practices. The sharing of this data could be between organizations or between entities in other industries like government agencies and financial institutions. For example, healthcare organizations can share data on cyber threats or insider threats such as those emanating from cyber-attacks.

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Ethical information sharing is useful in all types of threats and incidences, whether there is an incident of something that occurred previously or now. Notably, both frequencies and warnings have real-time indicators to help spot the occurrence. They are stimulating ethical healthcare information sharing aids incident communication, which is essential for the communications department in healthcare organizations and their entire service delivery reputation. For instance, the importance is noticeable because it can potentially prevent future cyber-security incidences from taking place. Health care organizations and other related entities should know what happened, the process of its discovery, the magnitude of losses caused damage, or harm, and proof of the incident occurrence.

Elsewhere, HIPPA says widespread cybersecurity concerns are the primary reason healthcare providers are hesitant to share patient or general healthcare information electronically (Hegwer, 2017). HIPPA allows access, usage, and disclosure of Protected Health Information and research shows that patients assume that the sharing of their classified information is automatic between their treating physicians. However, individual stakeholders in the healthcare department information-sharing barriers induce a regulatory burden on the concerned organizations (Anderson, 2018). The difficulty may make these organizations and other stake holding entities reconsider data sharing, which may include total withdrawal from an electronic or digital system of data sharing.

Healthcare entities like the American Healthcare Associations have reservations on the legal provisions of HIPPA. The association feels that reducing data sharing barriers in current regulations of the Act will aid healthcare automatically. Moreover, HIPPA regulations limit patient data sharing for healthcare operations like the assessment of the quality of services and outcome evaluation for improvement purposes.

Personal Opinion on Healthcare Data Security

Information security is essential in any public service sector in a country because any form of loophole may result in perpetration of criminal activities of any fatal nature. In health care, information security is more critical as it deals with human life care; therefore, there is a high interest in accessing healthcare data by criminals. As mentioned in the review, healthcare organizations are becoming more vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks with continuous technological advancements. The breaching of several health systems in the United States in 2016 that resulted in a seven-figure settlement for HIPPA violations is a precise case study of the level of vulnerability of health systems. Therefore, for improved healthcare that the health department is investing a lot to achieve for the American people, there is a dare need for improvement in healthcare data-security systems.

The vulnerability to healthcare systems indeed keeps increasing, and significant contributors to such are the care providers and the government. Noticeable, as mentioned earlier, healthcare providers tend to put more focus on the delivery of medical care services without paying attention to the information infrastructure. This imbalance and one-sided focus is a significant cause of vulnerability, and the loose systems are allowing easy access to classified healthcare information leading to increased cases of breach. From the past breach incidences that caused a lot of havoc to the healthcare systems of the United States, organizations should now realize that there is a need to pay equal attention to information infrastructure and operations as it does to healthcare service provision. They should advance their systems to fight proactively against cyber attacks to strengthen the security of health data within the system. The fight will include improving the system's infrastructure and quality of ethical data sharing within the organization and beyond.

As earlier mentioned, it is quite essential to note that cyber attackers earn fortunes when they access organizations' and patients' information, for example, financial information. The access is possible mostly on the web when healthcare providers share data in their daily routine. Therefore, in attempts to upgrade data security systems within healthcare organizations, there should be much care on ethical data sharing. HIPPA may have undesirable provisions, for instance, allowing restricted sharing of patients' information (PHI) as contested by the American Healthcare Association. However, the federal government had good intentions to help the healthcare system to protect vulnerable patients' classified information. Any Act in law has both the good and the wrong side of it anywhere in the whole world. The healthcare sector should not fault the government over the entire HIPPA because it has some provisions that they feel are not going down well with them; the critics should not be ill-intentioned. The HIPPA is a good Act that gears at improving ethical practices in data sharing within the healthcare sector despite debatable loopholes. Involved parties like the health care associations should engage the government in discussions to amend any part of the Act that they fee is not okay instead of negative criticism.

Negative Side of Improved Healthcare Data Security

Any good thing must have the negative side of it, and attempts to heighten the security of data systems in the healthcare sector are not an exemption. The implementation of HIPPA provisions and other technical measures to improve security of healthcare data may be an excellent initiative to block criminals from accessing health information. However, few internal challenges come with these implementations, and the healthcare sector again must have to think of a way to minimize such issues. The system gets unwieldy, resulting in a cynical attitude with the care providers, which in turn causes the problems that seem to be drawbacks with the enhanced information systems security.

The system may have technical usability procedures that may mislead clinicians resulting in repeated similar documentation in more than one place - duplication or misplacing information within the system cause monotony and disorganization within a system. The clinicians may find work tiresome and boring when complicated systems are in place for use in the name of high-security digital health systems. Similarly, with a sophisticated computer system, it may take several clicks to do standard functions like writing a prescription, which again makes the clinicians work tiresome and boring. Furthermore, it also makes patients tired and bored of waiting for lengthy consultations, which is not good when a healthcare facility is dealing with an emergency case.

Besides, secure modern computer systems have fast track and detection techniques that may bring up too many pops up warnings and alerts, causing "alert fatigue" to the users. Moreover, the learning process that comes with the advancement of security systems in the computers is excessively long, and it is challenging for the clinicians who worked their whole career on paper-based data documentation and sharing. The method may have to either replace such clinicians with new ones or invest in training them with will be more challenging. The improved systems may also have fatigue implications on the patients as the patient experience, such as when they see doctors spending more time on computers than talking to them.

What it takes to Implement Improved Healthcare Data Security

As earlier mentioned, it is no secret that healthcare is quite a lucrative sector for cybercriminals across the world, with a significant increase in cyberattack cases, despite a high level of awareness (Krisby 2018). Healthcare organizations under siege with these cyberattack cases are trying to tighten information security. Many are hiring cybersecurity professionals with more considerable experience from more mature industries, while others are working towards adopting robust frameworks. The frameworks in question are like HITRUST and ISO that evaluates and improve cybersecurity regulations and controls, including awareness coaching for the healthcare labor force (Langer, 201). More healthcare organizations are also planning to increase the level of investments in cybersecurity systems.

For an improved cybersecurity system, healthcare organizations should adhere to five essential steps to have what it takes for a high-level security system. First, the organizations should know what is on their network. There are tools available that will help them identify the currently available devices on the net and notify them when there is an additional device. The initiative will provide visibility to understand what is on the web, what they are sending, and validation on whether they are appropriate. Secondly, they should apply regular software updates and patches in the system because implementing increased patching and new software versions are essential in preventing breaches from attackers.

Additionally, the organizations should be able to least privileged access to sensitive and critical data in the system. The basis of access should be on the need to know, users who need access should only see what is necessary to them and their job duties, and there should include automatic removal of access when dormant. There should also be thorough training for users to avoid and report any malice and possible attacks. The practice creates security awareness within the organizations' network because it provides the workforce with means to detect and report any form of suspected offenses (Burgner, 2012) . Finally, the systems should be able to engage trusted partners. For instance, in outsourcing data processing duties, the organizations should deal with trusted partners with robust cybersecurity controls. The active security systems will ensure that the data outsourced is safe.

Conclusion

The rising cases in healthcare cyberattacks alarm most of the healthcare organizations within the United States to fight back and reduce such instances. The necessity in the war is that as attackers feel that healthcare is a lucrative field with booming returns, healthcare providers must also maintain their reputation in quality of service. The government is spending so much on healthcare across the country, and therefore the healthcare sector must step up and ensure data is secure. The immediate beneficiaries of data security advancement are the patients and the health providers; for those reasons, they should be the front players in tightening data security.

References

Anderson Jr., R. E. (2018). Low-Cost Strategies to Strengthen Cybersec...