Health Care Information Protection
Confidentiality, security, and privacy of health information is an important sector governing the dissemination of health care services. With evolvement of provision of these services through electronic technology services such as the use of e-health care and internet, patients are at a high risk of health information insecurity. As such, health information, which is considered to be private information that should be highly secured, may leak to public or to illegal parties. This may be due to ignorance and carelessness of health care service providers or use of ineffective machines. It is the role of health care service providers to safeguard information pertaining treatment and medical history of patients. Therefore, all computers should only be accessed by authorized personnel. The relevance of venturing into this research topic is to explore on laws and ethics which safeguard patients’ privacy which include subtopics that are discussed herein as confidentiality, security and privacy.
Possible research questions include:
- What does confidentiality of patient information entail?
- What is the relevance of confidentiality in health care service provision?
- How does privacy combat the risk of leaking health information to unauthorized personnel?
- By breaching confidentiality, what are the penalties that offenders may face based on modifications of security rules and HIPAA privacy? What are the repercussions of breaching confidentiality?
- What are the stated goals of HIPAA security rule?
- When considering protection of sensitive health information, what are some of the domains that require several special layers of confidentiality?
The Health law book written by Furrow et al. (2014) helps understand laws and ethic regarding health care by addressing the three concepts, privacy, security and confidentiality in health care organizations. Moreover, it addresses the negative effects of breaching these elements. A journal by McGraw, Rosati and Evans (2012) addresses the relevance of use of electronic health data in addressing health issues. It further explores on relevance of safeguarding the data in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety using the three concepts.
References
Furrow, B., Greaney, T., Johnson, S., Jost, T., & Schwartz, R. (2014). Health law. West Academic.
McGraw, D., Rosati, K., & Evans, B. (2012). A policy framework for public health uses of electronic health data. Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, 21(1), 18-22.
