HIPAA and Technology
Chamberlain College of Nursing
Eghosasere Egiebor Choosing a career in healthcare can be very difficult and has its’ many implications because of what people consider to be personal decisions. When patients come into any healthcare setting, they are in a position where they are fully trusting the professionals to secure their privacy. The primary and sole outcome of providing patient care should be focused on positive patient outcomes. Taking advantage of a patient is inexcusable even in cases where the offender may not be caught. This is a particular and a very big concern when technology is involved.
Advantages to technology
When it comes to healthcare, technology is the basis of most, if not all, of our advancements. …show more content…
Human error in using technology in healthcare may occur in data entry, data retrieval, or data interpretation. The American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy cites that in the ambulatory setting, some three million adverse drug events are preventable per year, stating – 1.5% to 4% in prescription error with “potentially serious patient risk” and 5% to 18% patients experienced adverse drug events (Figge, 2009). Human error occurs more than we expect and can easily happen with the transferring of patient information, misspelling words, mixing patient’s records, or just making transcription errors. Self-checker applications such as iTriage and Symptify from the Mayo Clinic were found to provide the correct diagnosis listed first 34% of the time and suggesting proper triage in 57% of the cases for consumers on average (Semigran, Linder, Gidengil, & Mehrota, 2015). Unfortunately, although human error exists in a non-technological health system, incorporating technology in healthcare insitutions does not eliminate this aspect. Security is always an issue as hacking is always a concern. So, yes we can attempt to reduce the errors healthcare workers make by being more attentive to our work, but it does not fully eliminate the …show more content…
The first is that the nurse’s phone was hacked into and therefore adding a dimension that would require a thorough investigation into whether the photos were distributed during clock hours or after. The other, of course, is the possibility that photos were taken and shared by someone other than the nurse. Either case provides sufficient discussion of how taking a photo in the first place is a violation of the patient’s privacy within a medical setting. By the nurse taking photos of the musician, she is breaking HIPAA rules since the photo indicates his medical condition and private information based on the Privacy Rule. The Privacy Rule applies more generally to all information that is identifiable to the patient in any form.
In using social media and smartphone technology in healthcare, providers and patient caregivers all-in-all should give benefit to the patient’s liberty and privacy. The healthcare profession is a much different environment than a simple pedestrian acting as paparazzi. This unique position makes it important for the healthcare community to ensure that medically relevant information, consented or not, be taken with care as if it were your own with reasonable authority given for sharing between institutions and care
Chamberlain College of Nursing
Eghosasere Egiebor Choosing a career in healthcare can be very difficult and has its’ many implications because of what people consider to be personal decisions. When patients come into any healthcare setting, they are in a position where they are fully trusting the professionals to secure their privacy. The primary and sole outcome of providing patient care should be focused on positive patient outcomes. Taking advantage of a patient is inexcusable even in cases where the offender may not be caught. This is a particular and a very big concern when technology is involved.
Advantages to technology
When it comes to healthcare, technology is the basis of most, if not all, of our advancements. …show more content…
Human error in using technology in healthcare may occur in data entry, data retrieval, or data interpretation. The American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy cites that in the ambulatory setting, some three million adverse drug events are preventable per year, stating – 1.5% to 4% in prescription error with “potentially serious patient risk” and 5% to 18% patients experienced adverse drug events (Figge, 2009). Human error occurs more than we expect and can easily happen with the transferring of patient information, misspelling words, mixing patient’s records, or just making transcription errors. Self-checker applications such as iTriage and Symptify from the Mayo Clinic were found to provide the correct diagnosis listed first 34% of the time and suggesting proper triage in 57% of the cases for consumers on average (Semigran, Linder, Gidengil, & Mehrota, 2015). Unfortunately, although human error exists in a non-technological health system, incorporating technology in healthcare insitutions does not eliminate this aspect. Security is always an issue as hacking is always a concern. So, yes we can attempt to reduce the errors healthcare workers make by being more attentive to our work, but it does not fully eliminate the …show more content…
The first is that the nurse’s phone was hacked into and therefore adding a dimension that would require a thorough investigation into whether the photos were distributed during clock hours or after. The other, of course, is the possibility that photos were taken and shared by someone other than the nurse. Either case provides sufficient discussion of how taking a photo in the first place is a violation of the patient’s privacy within a medical setting. By the nurse taking photos of the musician, she is breaking HIPAA rules since the photo indicates his medical condition and private information based on the Privacy Rule. The Privacy Rule applies more generally to all information that is identifiable to the patient in any form.
In using social media and smartphone technology in healthcare, providers and patient caregivers all-in-all should give benefit to the patient’s liberty and privacy. The healthcare profession is a much different environment than a simple pedestrian acting as paparazzi. This unique position makes it important for the healthcare community to ensure that medically relevant information, consented or not, be taken with care as if it were your own with reasonable authority given for sharing between institutions and care