Protected health information (PHI)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) outline regulations that govern the use of smartphone and social media in the healthcare institution. Healthcare practitioners thus have to be sensitive to these regulations. The HIPAA provides a clear definition of the Protected Health Information (PHI). Regarding the HIPAA definition, Yang & Garibaldi (2015) state, “ protected health information is the term given to health data created, received, stored, or transmitted by HIPAA-covered entities and their business associates concerning the provision of healthcare operations and payment for healthcare services. It implies that any present, future or past information concerning a patient that is stored, transmitted, or maintained in electronic media is categorized under the PHI by the HIPAA ( Spector & Kappel, 2012).
Thus, HIPAA has several regulations with the aim of protecting the patients and ensuring that PHIs are not only protected but less breached. The HIPAA body, therefore, specifies laws that govern hospital a dministration concerning HIPAA. The administrative must place measures to ensure patient data is correct and accessible to authorized parties. Further, HIPAA regulations stipulate that there should be Physical measures to prevent physical theft and loss of devices containing electronic PHI. Lastly, the hospital, according to HIPAA measures, must have technology-related measures to protect your networks and devices from data breaches and unauthorized access. Besides, all parties in the hospital must understand privacy issues and should not breach them at all cost (Ventola, 2014).
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Security, privacy, and confidentially
The term privacy means that the right of a patient to decide on how personal information should be used or shared within the hospital. Patients have the right to decide on matters concerning their lives. The patients have the right to dictate how physicians should use their information unless there are other circumstances underlined under HIPAA states privacy rules that overrule the patients’ privacy right. For instance, a physician cannot disclose a patient’s data on the specific disease to a spouse or family member without the patients' consent. On the other hand, confidentiality is the physicians’ obligation to hold and protect the patient’s data. The physician has the moral obligation to ensure that the information he or she possesses concerning specific patients is not only protected, but also is safe, and is only used for the right purpose and by the right people (Ventola, 2014). Security in this context means the measures to protect the patient information. It may imply the administrative measures such as physical protect, technology-based project and issues such as password and codes that ensure that the patients' data is safe.
Interdisciplinary team’s role and importance in informatics
A hospital is an environment where there is a conglomeration of different disciplines to achieve a common goal. In this sense, there is a need for all the disciplines to come together to protect patients data. It means that all professionals involved have to guide each other, report data misuse and also collaborate to ensure that there are ethical behaviors with regards to smartphone use, data sharing and social media use in situations where there is a need. Interdisciplinary collaboration to protect data thus increases patient’s safety, quality care, and ethical practice, thus reducing legal issues in the hospital ( Spector & Kappel, 2012). As the interpersonal teamwork together, there need to understand staff can have his or her licenses withdrawn due to HIPAA violation. For instance, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, fifty nurses were fired for violating HIPAA ( Wofford, 2019). The nursing practitioners enter the list of other 200 staffs that have faced grave consequences for this particular matter.
Besides, they need to understand that there are sanctions in different healthcare institution for those who are reckless while handling patient information. In most hospitals, staffs are either fired, punished, or have their licenses withdrawn by the board concerned. Further, the team must also ensure that they understand penalties. “ The penalties for noncompliance are based on the level of negligence and can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation (or per record), with a maximum penalty of $1.5 million per year for violations of an identical provision” ( Spector & Kappel, 2012).
Implementation evidence-based strategies to protect PHI
Risk assessment survey is one of the evidence-based strategies most hospitals used to reduce privacy, confidentiality, and security issues as far as social media use is concerned. Others also monitor the devices and have records which they use to provide HIPAA education to the staffs.
References
Spector, N., & Kappel, D. M. (2012). Guidelines for using electronic and social media: The regulatory perspective. Online J Issues Nurs , 17 (3), 1.
Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics , 39 (7), 491.
Wofford, P. (2019). Jussie Smollett Case: 50 Hospital Workers Fired For Alleged HIPAA Violations. Retrieved 18 August 2019, from https://nurse.org/articles/smollett-hospital-workers-fired/
Yang, H., & Garibaldi, J. M. (2015). Automatic detection of protected health information from clinic narratives. Journal of biomedical informatics , 58 , S30-S38.
