Confidentiality: Heath Insurance Portability And Accountability In Health Care

Superior Essays
Patients’ Confidentiality
Juliet Mpanja
Milwaukee Area Technical College

Confidentiality is a major requirement in health care. The requirement is for the providers to keep patients personal health information private without releasing it to anybody without their consent from either the patient or the patient’s legal representative. “Beginning in 1893, nurses taking the Nightingale pledge promised to do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling” (Claire McGowan, RN,MS,JD, ACNP,CCRN ). In 1996, the Heath Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) was enacted
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Work sometimes can get very busy while taking care of different patients. Always ensure that you are not leaving worksheets or paperwork in any patient’s room even if it belongs to that patient. Confidentiality can be breached for example on a busy schedule, a nurse taking care of two different patients may forget another patient’s discharge paper work in another patient’s room and that patient may read that information and thus confidentiality is breached. Nurses should also always check arm bands, because there could be two patients with the same last name and information may go to someone else that it’s not intended …show more content…
The HIPPA statute gave the department of justice authority to persecute providers who violate HIPPA. Some fines are up to 250,000 and up to ten years in jail. “Federal court made clear in a decision in May 2012, one can be persecuted under HIPPA without knowing that obtaining PHI (Protected Health Information is illegal. A person only needs to know that he or she obtained individually identifiable information relating to an individual without authorization.” (Tatiana Melnik,

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