Secure Health Records: Ensuring Patient Privacy and Safety - Paper Example

Introduction

Patients' treatment process involves an array of ways of data collection that is used to customize the treatment plan. Therefore, health records are shared with more than one person or physician to help provide an effective treatment process and a flexible schedule. Nevertheless, the dissemination and sharing of sensitive data, opens an ethical issue, regarding the safety, and confidentiality of the patient's data from being accessed or shared with unwanted third-party members, who may be involved in the treatment process. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), defines a series of logical steps, and precisely the extent of data sharing. In this case, the Act provides valuable information, on what information of the patient can be released, and the bodies that, can access that information. Therefore, the HIPAA Act of 1996, provides an ethical consideration for many healthcare practitioners to consider before exposing or sharing sensitive patients' data to the unwanted company. Thus, the research seeks to critically elucidate on how patient information sharing is governed by HIPAA, as an ethical issue.

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Patient's Data Sharing

Data collection from patients involves a series of events, where some of the information obtained from the patients is deemed to be more confidential. Therefore, it is essential to protect the patient's data from unauthorized bodies. Through this, a higher level of ethical act is practised in the profession, helping patients feel more comfortable, and confidential during the treatment process. According to Cohen and Mello (2018), before the implementation of the HIPAA Act in 1996, patients did not have the right to choose who gets to see or access their data. Even though most of those who accessed the data, were mostly health practitioners and insurance companies. Confidence between the patient and the health practitioners deteriorated. On the contrary, most of the patients, remained skeptical about sharing their personal data, fearing that it would be shared across multiple irrelevant platforms.

According to Edemekong et al., (2020) data dissemination before the enactment of the HIPAA Act violated ethical conduct, since sensitive information was shared by dozens of health practitioners. Nevertheless, most of the physicians deemed this concept as a legitimate and ultimate means of getting the patient assisted. As a result, most of the physicians, utilized the utilitarianism theory, as a means of justifying their actions, limiting the potential possibility of categorizing their actions as unethical. However, the patients were stripped of their rights in knowing where their information has been used and will be used during the treatment process. Therefore, any data collected may be subjected to misuse, or poor storage, exposing the patient's privacy.

How Patients' Data was Misused

Before the enactment of HIPAA, no federal body regulated or addressed patient data privacy as a serious objective. Healthcare information was disseminated without considering the impact of the data sharing and how it might impact the patient, especially in acquiring insurance. Nevertheless, data dissemination and sharing of critical information, affected many individuals, especially those who were unemployed. On the contrary, the issue of data sharing remained one of the ethically debated concepts that challenged the practices of many health practitioners. Even though there were no fully advocating bodies that could limit the damages of patient data sharing, most of the states suffered from lax enforcement.

Confidentiality is the process of safeguarding the information that has been gathered between two people. As a result, the subject resolves to share the information due to the trust of not sharing the data with any other party that the subject does not wish to disclose the information to. Therefore, the subjects provide sensitive information, which has not been shared with a third party. Even though the healthcare practitioner is one of the professions, where confidentiality is part of the ethical practice that most of the physicians have to uphold, violation of this concept, was nationally practiced, and instituted by the need for profitability, and transparency between insurance companies and employers. Healthcare and insurance companies shared back and forth critical information about their patients' conditions. Therefore, the dissemination of data, jeopardized confidentiality, proving to be one of the unethical practices in the medical field.

As McKnight and Franko (2016) observed, before the implementation of HIPAA, healthcare services, suffered from poor data management, and dissemination of confidential information. Employers were constantly supplied with critical information from both healthcare facilities and insurance companies. Some of the information shared included mental health status, disease diagnostics, as well as medication plans. Therefore, patients' data supplied to these bodies profoundly challenged the concept of ethics in the healthcare profession.

HIPAA's Role

The role played by HIPAA in fraud reduction, and abuse of patient's data provides an ethical practice in the medical field. Numerous sections of the Act outlines and justified the consequences associated with breaching or violating patients' privacy. Section 260-264 of the HIPAA Act mandates the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services to explicitly announce regulations on an electronic exchange, security, and privacy of patient's health records (Edemekong et al., 2020). Even though the restriction of data transfer, may seem like an obstacle in transferring insurance cover from one company to the other, HIPAA considers and supports the transfer of millions of American's insurance data from one company to the other in an ethical manner, that limits, any violation or abuse of patient's data.

Since the implementation of the HIPAA Act, most health plans and healthcare practitioners covered by the law, have gradually changed the way they access, process, and disseminate patient data. As McKnight and Franko (2016) observed, the HIPAA privacy regulating rule for the first time created a nationwide standard that limits data access and dissemination. Therefore, the practice provides an ethical practice in data safeguarding that was deprived of the patients. As Cohen and Mello (2018) observed, the HIPAA Act provides patients with more control over their health information. As a result, the Act has managed to resolve one of the unethical practices that had left many patients at the mercy of health practitioners and insurance companies.

The dissemination or sharing of the patient's data holds, the violators accountable, which is subjected to civil and criminal penalties. The charges are imposed when there has been a patient's privacy right breach. Thus, patients are protected, by all means.

Conclusion

Since the enacting of the HIPAA Act in 1996 and refining it in early 2000, patients' privet information has reshaped the face of healthcare systems. The Act of 1996 has reinforced confidentiality between patients and physicians, as patients do not have to worry about their information being shared with third parties without their consent. Moreover, this has increased the transparency between patients and physicians. Most of the working patients do not have to worry about their information being sent to their employers regarding their health via their insurance company.

References

Cohen, I. G., & Mello, M. M. (2018). HIPAA and protecting health information in the 21st century. Jama, 320(3), 231-232.doi:10.1001/jama.2018.5630

Edemekong, P., Annamaraju, P., & Haydel, M. (2020). Health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA). StatPearls.

McKnight, R., & Franko, O. (2016). HIPAA compliance with mobile devices among ACGME programs. Journal of medical systems, 40(5), 129.doi10.1007/s10916-016-0489-2