Health and legal challenges in the field of health information
The management must be aware of various issues in the health information use that might raise ethical concerns and potentially lead to legal suits, and work towards addressing such issues. On the ethical front, the management must consider the impacts of safeguarding the information that has been attained in private and confidential. Failure to observe such an ethical requirement has the potential of attracting legal suits from the patients. It is also important for the management to consider the possibility of security breaches and the legal effects that such will tract if the leaked and breached information finds the wrong hands (Christiansen et al., 2017). In most cases, the nature of the information contained is often sensitive, and a breach might lead to the exposure of somethings that ought to be prevented. Other legal challenges and potential lawsuits will arise if the health information stored is mixed up, and the patients are forced to be given treatment/care based on inaccurate data. Therefore, the management must act on the patient’s health information with care to be both ethical and avoid potential suits that might arise.
With the advent of technology requiring that the HIM professions employ electronic data management systems, they might find it difficult to implement the same in the rural acute healthcare system. Further, it will be difficult to collect the information needed from the rural acute healthcare facility with anticipated challenges such as language barriers and miscommunication. It is unlikely that the rural environment will offer the same functionalities to the HIM compared to the other settings, and all those might be taken into consideration.
References
Christiansen, E. K., Skipenes, E., Hausken, M. F., Skeie, S., Østbye, T., & Iversen, M. M. (2017). Shared electronic health record systems: key legal and security challenges. Journal of diabetes science and technology, 11(6), 1234-1239.