HIPAA Case Study Essay

With the use of EHR comes the opportunity for patients to receive improved coordinated care from medical professions and easier access to their health data. The author identifies views about the problems of EHR and the legislation. Health care professionals understand and accept the obligations under the Privacy and Security, patient’s information can still be at breached if those involved in patient health do not make sure that their information is secured. There is an increased risk of privacy violations with EHR if used improperly. Even though there are legislations in place to protect patient’s information, data still can be easily accessed either intentionally or accidental by using improper security measures.

HIPAA is the law that must be followed by all healthcare personnel at every level, both professional and non-professional. Any companies that provide services to healthcare providers must follow HIPAA. HIPAA is a set of basic national privacy standards and information practices. The purpose of it is to protect the privacy of all patients and residents of the United States who receive any kind of healthcare services. Patients can enjoy protection and peace about their healthcare information due to HIPAA (Rorer ). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act provides standardized patients health, administrative, and financial information, and provides protection and security of confidential patient health information. It protects medical

The HIPAA regulation changes include new patient rights. Patients now have a right to request electronic copies of their records if their health care

It is now week two of interning back at this endoscopy center. I don’t consider this week two but just a continuation. I experienced myself violating HIPPA. I could not believe that I was very carless with a patient’s electronic health record. I was dealing with two different patients side by side when they were laying down after they had gotten their endoscopy procedure done. They were resting a little after the medication and I had the computer on wheels moving around. This computer on wheels abbreviated, as ‘cow’ is very beneficial to the doctors since they move it with them, as they are moving around in the office. However, this computer on wheels was left on with a patients record and I was turned around to assist the next one. I was being observed when I am in this section of the center. The doctor that was observing did not tell me that I was violating HIPPA until after. He told me that I should be more careful. I could not believe myself that I did such a thing as

Unfortunately HIPAA violations happen every year in our country. In fact, a situation happened in a New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center on May 7th 2010. The HIPAA violation happened after the electronic health records of 6,800 patients ended up on Google for the world to see. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) who are responsible for HIPAA enforcement laws deeply investigated this case. It was discovered that a Columbia University physician who developed applications for New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University, attempted to deactivate a personally owned computer server on the network containing electronic protected health information (ePHI). Due to lack of technical

When entering a patient 's room, remember to close the door behind. If the door is left open, people walking by the room could possibly over hear the conversation. This could lead to a potential violation of HIPAA.

I agree with you, Dr. Zhou should have clear understanding of the HIPAA law, that is part of orientation practice for everyone who has access to patient information in the health care field. For Dr. Zhou to access the patient electronic records after his termination is very alarming. Everyone agrees that his plea deal of $2000 of fine and four months in prison was a lesser punishment than what he deserves. According the HIPAA law he could spent more than 10 years in prison for his action .What is your thoughts. Don’t you think UCLA should have been liable for failing to protect the patient information. While we can be pleased with many benefits that the electronic charting system and patient records keeping system have to offer, don’t you

If you work in healthcare, anywhere from a small medical office to a big hospital to an insurance company, you need to be in compliance with HIPAA. This is a long, complicated document and even big insurance companies struggle to keep the rules fresh in everyone 's mind and everyone on top of the most critical functions. Here are a few things to make sure you are doing right:

Health care includes preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, rehabilitative, maintenance, or palliative care, and counseling, services, assessment, or procedure with respect to the physical or mental condition, or functional status of an individual. Health Care Clearinghouse, Businesses that process or facilitate the processing of health information received form other businesses. It includes groups such as physician and hospital billing services. Health Plans, Individuals or group plans that provide or pay the cost of medical care and includes both Medicare and Medicaid programs. HIPAA protects an individual’s health information and their demographic information. This is called protected health information or PHI. Information meets the definition of PHI if, even without the patient’s name, if you look at certain information and you can tell who the person is then it is PHI. The PHI can relate to past, present or future physical or mental health of the individual. PHI describes a disease, diagnosis, procedure, prognosis, or condition of the individual and can exist in any medium files, voice mail, email, fax, or verbal communications. defines information as protected health information if it contains the following information about the patient, the patient’s household members, or the patient’s employers, Names, Dates relating to a patient, i.e. birth dates, dates of medical treatment, admission and discharge dates, and dates of death, Telephone numbers, addresses (including city, county, or zip code) fax numbers and other contact information, Social Security numbers, Medical records numbers, Photographs, Finger and voice prints, Any other unique identifying

Since HIPAA become mandatory on most of the health care organization, patient information is more secure compared to previous. Health care organization are investing huge amount of fund for safety measures to protect the patient information and i think this is the main concern in today's advanced health care

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) sets security standards for safeguarding important patient health information that is being stored and maintained in analog and digital forms. As new technologies continue to facilitate the healthcare industry’s transition to paperless processes, health care providers, insurance companies, and other institutions are also growing increasingly dependent on electronic information systems to manage their HIPAA compliance programs. As a result, the safety and security of sensitive health data has become a major concern across the board.

She was a respiratory therapist who worked at a 72-bed hospital in Oregon; Ohio called ProMedica Bay Park Hospital. She “was authorized to access individually identifiable health information and protected health information of certain respiratory patients,” not of other hospital patients (McGee, 2015). She had accessed practically 600 patients protected heath information (PHI), but it topped out at 596 patients. During May of 2014, “ProMedica began notifying the affected patients that their records were inappropriately accessed between April 1, 2013, and April 1, 2014,” many of whom were frightened and had felt uneasy thereafter (McGee, 2015). The situation was made aware to U.S Department of Health and Human Services, who has since then posted her case onto their “Wall of Shame.” All healthcare professionals, whether it is the receptionists all the way up to the owner of the hospital, are going to have heard about HIPAA at some point in their employment. The punishment is pretty hefty, so that is probably why there are only a couple of cases with violations of HIPAA resulting in criminal severities. The legalities of breaching PHI “to a third party carries a jail term of up to 10 years in addition to a maximum fine of $500,000 if the disclosure is made

HIPAA is legislation that is mostly used in United States for the protection and privacy of the patient’s information. The medical information is protected by HIPAA whereby it ensures safe access to health and other personal information. HIPAA is therefore divided into five rules and regulations. There is private rule which ensures that all the information about individual’s health is highly protected. Private rule allows a good flow of health care information to ensure that an individual gets the best quality health care. Private rule permits the access of the important information while keeping top security and privacy of treatment details of the patient. Security rule is also a rule found in HIPAA whereby it has administrative and technical guards which are responsible in ensuring that there is confidentiality and integrity of the information which is stored electronically. Security rule also requires physical safeguarding to offer

The HIPAA rule is built to protect and prevent disclosing individuals’, and consumers’ identifiable health care information unlawfully and without getting authority from the concern parties. If someone break the law, individuals are subject to civil penalties of $100 on each violation but the penalty can accumulates based on numbers of violations; the standard maximum limit of civil penalties is $25,000 each person, each year (HIPAA Privacy Rule – What Employers Need to Know, n. d.). As per stacking rules, if a person violated two HIPAA standards, the penalty can be $50,000; Similarly, the criminal penalties subject to maximum of $ 250,000 and ten years in prison can be imposed to those individuals and parties who disclosed protected information

Current use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) has proven to be helpful for hospitals and independent medical practice to provide efficient care for patients. Balestra reports that using computers to maintain patient health records and care reduces errors, and advances in health information technology are saving lives and reducing cost (Balestra, 2017). As technology advances EHR are going to continue to be the main method of record keeping among medical providers. Therefore, staff and medical providers need to be trained on how to properly share patients EHR safely and in a secure form in order to maintain patient confidentiality. As records were shared electronically rules were implemented for clinicians to follow known as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 (Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule ,2013). These rules were implemented for clinicians to protect the