Medical Laws and Ethics Class
HIPPA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The main purposes of the Act are; to ensure that there is no fraud or abuse in healthcare services, to facilitate insurance portability for pre-existing medical conditions and to enforce the standard information required in medical practices. The Act provides guidelines and procedures that are required in medical administrative policies. Failure to comply with the guidelines results to legal formalities as discussed below.
In regards to the patients care delivery, HIPPA formulate controls that set boundaries that health care record and patient’s health information cannot be disclosed. In concern, Professional facilitates their staff with policies agreements that patients voluntary consents for their information disclosure. Despites of the professionals’ compliances, HIPPA extends to prohibit the disclosure, even among professionals themselves, thus complicating their working conditions: the material facts health information is important to be enhanced among health a provider who attends to the same patients (Berwick & Gaines, 2018). They help to effectively administer the appropriate medication that best fits the patients and also expands learning in the medical platform. .
One of the violating example, is a case whereby a medical transcriptionist accidentally sends a patient’s information to a wrong doctor, he copy pasted the information from one system to another system accessed to a wrong patient. The case concerns matters of infectious disease outbreak. After an internal review, it is evident the disclosure results to a breach of notification therefore a complaint file needs to be filed with Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights (OCR).
The breach of Notification Document
November 12, 2020
James Doe
120 Main St.
Dear, Health and Human Service Officer,
I am writing to report of a breach of notification that has occurred in the General hospital, at 8.30 am, to 9.40 am, on 12 Nov 2020. The breach occurred as follows:
Description: The organizational medical transcriptionist accidentally sent critical information of a patient to the wrong doctor and consecutively accessed to a wrong patient.
Type of Protected Heath Information: Health data for infectious diseases.
Mitigation: The organization is currently undertaking a compliance plan that aims to facilitate data security by providing specifications for patients data access such as use of specific logins granted to specified staffs. The organization has also provided the notice of breach to the affected patient with adequate measures for their health security.
Sincerely,
General Hospital Representative
References
Berwick, D. M., & Gaines, M. E. (2018). How HIPAA harms care, and how to stop it. JAMA, 320(3), 229. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.8829