HIPAA Disadvantages In Health Care

Healthcare field is a large complex organization full of individuals whose duty is to provide the best health services possible. In order to provide patience’s with the best care possible these individuals have not only been trained in science and medicine but also in laws and ethics. Healthcare organization has always been interconnected with the government and law. Throughout the years there has been many laws set in place to protect all parties involved from state, organization, and individual employees and patients. A factor that has always been a concern in the healthcare system is that of privacy; individual patience’s tend to be concern for their private information and have the right to privacy and confidentiality. While organization are responsible for collecting and storing information with discretion and can be legally liable for any invasion of this privacy. According to (Pozgar, 2013) the information in a patient’s medical record is confidential and should not be disclosed without the patience’s permission. One of the most influential laws for health information and the protection of privacy is that of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (1996) designed to protect the privacy, confidentiality and security of patient information. HIPAA applies to all health information including paper, electronic and verbal as well as both maintained and transmitted; privacy standards include restriction on access to individually identifiable health information, and the use and disclosure of information according to Pozgar (2013, p. 245). It is important to have an accurate understanding of HIPAA to then be able to discuss benefits, weaknesses and future implications. Like with many other laws and acts there are both advantages and disadvantages; although HIPAA did not cover all bases and there has been modification it was the first to addressing a significant concern in the healthcare system. According to (Center for democracy and technology, 2009) there was no national health privacy law and there were no federal limits on how health care providers, employers and insurance collected and shared health information both in and out of the health system. A great advantage of HIPPA was giving individual’s rights to their health information …show more content…
One of the disadvantages of HIPAA was the over causticness in making sure information was not mishandled; which can create a disturbance in medical emergencies and time lagging when sharing vital information. HIPAA also increased the number of paper work, labor and time and cost. In order to correct this many health organizations outsourced the task of medical information to a growing industry of companies who help comply with HIPAA laws. As stated before standardization of information was a goal under HIPAA and play a connecting role with electronic health records (EHR). One of the ways to address the disadvantages of HIPAA was the use of EHR easing the use, storing, processing and sharing of medical records, however implementing this change is a challenge of its own. As can be imagined implementing a change that affects the healthcare system as a whole in order to better manage information can be very difficult with in organizational cultures and cost wise. Having information translated into EHR helps efficiency and privacy for the future but is difficult to start implications. The cost of applying and maintaining EHR can be seen as a major drawback. This brings light on the concern of health information systems and how to protect and keep privacy once information is