When concerning oneself with the business of keeping great records throughout a healthcare organization, you’ll always be concerned with ensuring legal compliance. That’s the best way to ensure that not only do you stay on the right side of the law, but that your patient care records are just as accurate and detailed as they’re supposed to be.
In this article, we’re going to run through some of the core tenets of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This is the main legal framework concerning patient care records in the US, so learning from it is both relevant and important.
Ensuring Security And Confidentiality
The primary purpose of HIPAA regulation through the US healthcare system is to ensure that all patient data is as secure and confidential as possible. In a very real sense, it’s an evolution of the old-school concept of doctor-patient confidentiality.
This is most commonly ensured through cybersecurity protection in our modern world, with a number of tools being employed. Typically, one of the most noticeable tools that can be seen in a healthcare environment is a physical key to access key data.
Typically, this is a keycard, containing an RFID chip that has been programmed to only allow the holder access to the relevant data that they need to interact with. In turn, this divides the total amount of data that a hospital or other organization might have to store, reducing the risk on the overall body of data.
Any newcomers to a healthcare environment will typically have to undergo data security training to ensure that they can be entirely safe and secure in their work. This is often seen in paraprofessional roles that have access to data, such as those that take on medical scribe jobs. Since these individuals are interacting with both patients and data every day, it’s important to consider their ability to remain confidential and secure.
As such, many hospitals in smaller locations will have rules and regulations in place to ensure there’s no crossover between the lives of staff and patients. For instance, if you are booked to see a nurse that you know in your day-to-day life, you can typically request to see someone else to protect your privacy.
Protecting Against Security Threats
A proactive approach to security threats is vital in the modern world, with many organizations deliberately engaging the services of data protection and cybersecurity specialists.
At first glance, it may seem a little odd that there are bad actors wishing to interact with confidential patient data, but the danger of that comes from a leak of a larger magnitude. For instance, it may not be terribly dangerous for one patient’s data to be leaked, but it’s much more concerning if every gastro patient from the past ten years has their data leaked at once.
This large volume of data can be tabulated and analyzed for patterns and key insights into where these patients are from, and what kind of lives they might lead. In turn, a predatory company could take the time to sell their snake oil ‘cure’ to these patients, with a little more knowledge about how, specifically, to sell to that group of people.
Avoiding Unauthorised Disclosure
Naturally, there are some cases where a third party may need to access your medical data. This may be a new job that’s ensuring you’re physically capable of a certain task, or a legal check to see if you’ve been hospitalized for a certain injury in the past.
However, among these genuine requests for information, there are bad actors that pose as official bodies to gain access to patient data. A core part of HIPAA is to maintain the patient’s right to access an electronic copy of their medical data while also ensuring that the same electronic copy doesn’t make its way into the hands of bad actors.
Often, hospitals perform checks and balances to ensure that the relevant medical data is going to a trustworthy person. This may include asking a verified representative of a given organization to confirm the request, and it may be a little simpler, too. Sometimes, a hospital may just reach out to the patient concerned, and ask if it would be okay to share their data with those that are asking for it.
The legal framework for managing patient care records can be quite complex, but with some time spent to ensure everyone understands the regulation and everyone is capable of following through with their tasks, compliance can be assured.
