Violating Patient's Confidentiality - Essay Sample

Introduction

Laws (2004) point out that The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) was formulated in 1966 to provide a guideline for the security, confidentiality, and transmissibility of confidential information. Under this act, any healthcare worker must protect and keep confidential of any personal health information. For accessing the personal details of his ex-husband, the nurse practitioner's license should be terminated since she has violated HIPPA regulation (Curran, Kaplan, Laska, & Bank, 1973). One of the ten violations of HIPPA regulation considers it an offense to access patient information even if it is due to curiosity or favoring a friend or a family member.

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Patient Confidentiality Law

Such kind of violation should first be reported to the organization’s Compliance officer of the health facility. If this is impossible or the health facility does not have a Compliance officer, the nurse practitioner should be reported to supervisors. This direction of actions facilitates the covered entity the chance of taking action instantly to address the breach or violation. Furthermore, patient confidentiality law will need the offense to be reported outside of the healthcare setting, and some have to inform the ex-husband of the nurse practitioner. In light of this statement, the offender needs to report to the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

The nursing board expects nurse practice and action to be competent, safe, ethical, and adhere to the applicable rules and laws. Any licensed nurse that may breech a nursing law o or state regulation may be reported to the nursing board (Sasso, Stievano, Gonzalez Jurado, & Rocco, 2008). Thus, the nurse practitioner stands to be reported to this board.

Scenarios allow some exceptions to a provider to access patient personal information without their consent. For instance, a nurse can disclose to the family members. In emergency treatment cases, health caregivers may access protected health information without a patient (Rothstein, 2012). In this scenario, disclosure is permitted when a patient needs emergency treatment for major medical concerns such as cardiovascular. However, in this case, the nurse practitioner accesses his ex-husband's information without seeking consent from him, or there no exceptional case that supports her action.

Conclusion

Confidentiality is key to the preservation of trust between physicians and their patients. The moral basis essential is consequentialist, in that it is to enhance patient wellbeing. There is a broader communitarian public interest in safeguarding privacy; hence, protection of confidentiality is vital to secure public health, and those who breach should be punished according to law.

References

Curran, W. J., Kaplan, H., Laska, E. M., & Bank, R. (1973). Protection of privacy and confidentiality: unique law protects patient records in a multistate psychiatric information system. Science, 182(4114), 797-802. Doi.10.1126/science.182.4114.797

Laws, A. (2004). The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500019/

Rothstein, M. A. (2012). Disclosing decedents’ research results to relatives violates the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The American Journal of Bioethics, 12(10), 16-17.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2012.699588

Sasso, L., Stievano, A., Gonzalez, Jurado, M., & Rocco, G. (2008). Code of ethics and conduct for European nursing. Nursing Ethics, 15(6), 821-836.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0969733008095390.