Health practitioners should exhibit high level of professionalism when handling patient data and records. Currently, practitioners emphasize on the importance of playing a supplemental role with regards to the needs of the client. In other words, the nurse or medical practitioner should facilitate patient independence by engaging in supportive activities to attain the treatment of the patient. Thus, it is paramount to maintain clear and consistent records concerning the patient to improve care outcomes. Ethical breach regarding patient records is one of the most notable cases of malpractice in the medical field.
The following three recommendations may help care providers to implement new strategies that can increase the safety of the health records. According to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), practitioners should avoid inappropriate release of patient data to third parties (Dinev, Albano, Xu, DAtri & Hart, 2016). Thus, advanced communication systems such as patient communication portals are vital in the long run. At the same time, all communications between the clients and practitioners should be secured using current and evidence-based control systems.
As one of the best and achievable standards, there is a need to strengthen privacy protection authorities in hospitals and healthcare institutions. For instance, it is paramount to install mandatory institutional review boards to oversee the process of sharing research information. Noteworthy, a large number of individuals who include medical researchers, pharmacists, physicians, nurses, and interest groups may access important patient data and records during their interaction with the client (Salantera, 2016). As a consequence, the practitioners may use the information for unstated purposes and for financial gain since majority of the clients do not have the financial ability to initiate a lawsuit against them. Thus, there is a need to educate patients on the significance of maintaining privacy of their records by communicating with the physician or nurse assigned to them.
In order to monitor performance against clear standards, the organization should perform regular assessments of the system, maintain retrievable audit trails, and ensure continuous identification of the users. System assessments are important in companies that rely on electronic health records to manage system vulnerabilities (Oswald, Norris, Hassan, Peek & Tully, 2017). Also, it is pivotal to maintain usable and retrievable audit trails that show access logs with both the time and date of access. Besides, users should change their passwords or access codes on a regular basis to ensure privacy of patient information.
References
Dinev, T., Albano, V., Xu, H., DAtri, A., & Hart, P. (2016). Individuals Attitudes Towards
Electronic Health Records: A Privacy Calculus Perspective. In Advances in Healthcare Informatics and Analytics (pp. 19-50). Springer International Publishing
Salantera, S. (2016, September). Factors Affecting the Availability of Electronic Patient Records
for Secondary PurposesA Case Study. InBuilding Sustainable Health Ecosystems: 6th International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society, WIS 2016, Tampere, Finland, September 16-18, 2016, Proceedings (Vol. 636, p. 47). Springer.
Oswald, M., Norris, R., Hassan, L., Peek, N., & Tully, M. (2017). Health data on public trial: To
what extent should patients control access to patient records?. International Journal for Population Data Science, 1(1).
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