Access Control In Healthcare

Healthcare technology has grown and evolved over time. With the conversion to electronic medical records and the creation of social media just to name a few, ensuring patient privacy is of the utmost importance for healthcare facilities in this day and age. In order for an organization to avoid hefty fines, it is imperative that a healthcare administrator maintains compliance with the standards and regulations associated with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This paper will provide a summary

Since the adoption of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, there had been some modifications and interpretations made to its provisions to ensure that the requirements of the law are strictly adhered to. Thus, the “two sets of federal regulations were implemented… the Privacy Rule and the Security Rule” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015, p. 157). Briefly, the Privacy Rule addresses the limited use and disclosure of patients’ health information, while the Security Rule refers to the need to safeguard “patients’ health information from improper use or disclosure” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015, p. 157). The case scenario discussed in this paper relates to the Privacy Rule and Security Rule of HIPAA.

In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA. The purpose of HIPAA is to provide guidance and tools to protect and secure patient’s medical records. There are two sections of the act that will be today’s focus – the Privacy Rule and the Security Rule. At the end of this training, employees will understand what HIPAA is, how it applies to [Hospital], and the penalties for violation.

Northwest Medical Center follows Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act(HIPAA) Privacy rule and a federal privacy law which provides all the guidelines for protecting the privacy of individual health information. It is mandatory for all the staff of the company to follow these protocols and enforce the use of best practices which will be provided to them as a training to keep them updated. We make sure that we provide the staff with regular training to keep them updated with the latest security measures. It is very important to refresh the staff with the guidelines because over the time they get to be very lenient in following the protocol which will result in the violation of the policy. Few of the top violations are that,

The government has also ensured compliance with HIPAA by implementing the HIPAA audit. The focus on specific controls such topics as policies and procedures to ensure privacy, confidentiality of the PHI of patients and evaluation of the action plans of the violation of security. Other security measures, including background checks of employees, all internal restrictions on the availability of private information and physical security measures to determine if they comply with the guidelines established by the HIPAA

There are many problems that could arise from a patient’s information landing into the hands of a stranger, a boss, an enemy, or any other individual that does not have permission to view that information.

HIPAA and HITECH Act help address several problems associated with inappropriate use of healthcare information by authorized users. HIPAA requires minimum necessary infor-mation to be released while HITECH goes into a little further detail but still to release minimum necessary information. Several different organizations need to define how they go about han-dling inappropriate use of information. A guideline must be set within the organization on who will have access to the information and how it is disbursed to other healthcare organizations re-questing records.

Hospitals have put in place widespread security and privacy measures to protect patient health information. However, there are still errors being made in data security through the IT standpoint. Some of these errors or issues include:

In order to minimize the risks for potential privacy breaches, the health information management (HIM) director has to understand all facets of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). This should include conducting an audit of their practices. In this scenario, an audit would have been useful to detect the improper access by the employee sooner. HIPAA uses both its privacy and security regulations to “protect consumer’s health information, allow consumers greater access and control to such information, enhance health care, and finally to create a national framework for health care privacy protection” (Amaguin, n.d.). These privacy and security regulations serve as the “only national set of regulations that governs

The breach of patients’ confidential information does not only jeopardize our reputation and reduce the public trust in our organization, it could also lead to severe financial consequences. Under HIPAA law, if an organization is found guilty of unauthorized disclosure of patient medical record, they could face prison time harsh privacy violation penalty. We are sure that none of us want this to happen to our organization. So how can we prevent medical record security leak and better protect our patients’ privacy while also providing the best care possible to all our patients? The following guidelines and

HIPAA was introduced to minimize possible misuse of patient’s private and personal information. HIPAA requires that the accessibility of the patient’s information by third parties be limited (Gostin, et al. 2009). In this scenario, HIPAA regulatory requirements seem to be compromised

We are all aware that our medical information is available to ourselves as the patient and to any physicians we may see in the course of our medical treatment, but do we realize who else has access to our records without our knowledge or permission? I decided to write about release of information after I had a notification at work that I could not look at my own records after notifying HIM there was a coding error. This paper is not meant to be all encompassing but will include the reasons Law enforcement might be allowed PHI without the patient’s knowledge or consent.

Role-based access control (RBAC) has implemented in every industry, healthcare systems, in particular, can benefit from a proper implementation of these solutions. The potential to save not only exists by dropping possible fines in HIPAA and Sar-Box audits, but also from prospective lawsuits if sensitive patient data is ever exposed or allowed to be accessed by the wrong personnel.

A policy of ‘need-to-know basis’ should be implemented which restricts access of information to only those personnel who need it to carry out day-to-day tasks. For instance, the receptionists do not need to have access to the patient’s medical record and thus should not be able to access them. In order to book and edit appointment, the receptionists only need access to the Patient Data to which they will have unlimited access to. However, every time such information is accessed, passwords should be entered as a form of authorization to prevent unauthorized personnel accessing the information. If, however, an individual who would ordinarily not have access to such information needs access due to roles changes, these permissions will have to be applied for and reviewed before permission is granted.

In health care, every day brings about a new emergencies and compliance professionals are often tasked with assisting their organizations navigate through them. These emergencies can be as large as a mass casualty event or a corporate catastrophe and as small as a patient arriving in the emergency department for a minor sports injury. To patients and their families, no emergency is insignificant, and requires discretion and privacy of patient health information. A visit to a hospital often evokes fear and anxiety, not only for the patient, but also for their families and loved ones. Each type of emergency may require a different level of use or disclosure of Protected Health