Ashford University MHA690

1. Patient Confidentiality
ST ROSE DOMINICAN HEALTHCARE
HENDERSON, NEVADA
MARCH 26TH, 2020
GLENNA FANNING

2. What Does Patient Confidentiality Mean
Patients come to our facility to be
taken care of and part of their right is
for privacy to be maintained.
In the current age of rapidly evolving
technology, it is no longer sufficient
to just remove a patient's name from
data, but all protected health
information (PHI) must be removed.

3. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed to make sure that
patients medical information remains private. There are five sections to the law.
• The Privacy Rule which includes the use and disclosure of patient's health information.
• The Security Rule which lays out the national guidelines for protecting electronic
health information's confidentiality, integrity and availability.
• The Breach Notification Rule which states that the Department of Health and Human Services
must be notified within 60 days that a breach has occurred when greater than 500 individuals
were effected.
• The Omnibus Rule which extends HIPAA to business associates, prohibits the use of PHI for
marketing or fundraising without authorization and lays out new penalty tiers for violations.
• The Enforcement Rule which identifies how an investigation is to be carried out should there
be a breach (Tariq and Hackert, 2019).

4. Some of the more common HIPAA violations by healthcare employees:
• Emailing ePHI to personal email or taking PHI from the facility usually so
work ca be completed a home.
• Leaving electronic devices and paperwork open and unattended
allowing anyine who stolls past to see iinto a patient's private record.
• Releasing patient information to an unauthorized person
(HIPAAJournal.com, 2020).

5. Violations of HIPAA laws come with a very stiff penalty. The amout is
based on the level of negligence and can range from $100 to $50,000 per
violation maxing out at $1.5 million per year.
There can be criminal charges that result in jail time as well (truvault.com,
2020).
There are many cases where nurses have been fired on the spot for a
willfull breach in HIPAA, meaning they knew it was breaking HIPAA law
but did it anyway.
Social media violation of HIPAA is one area that many healthcare workers
get into trouble with posting what seems to them as a funny photo, or a
lesson for other peopl, but it is against the law (hippajournal.com, 2020).

6. In health care, HIPAA pertains to all institutions and all workers in
those institutions including
• Providers
• Nurses
• Pharmacists
• Administration
• Foodservice
• Clerical
• Environmental Services
• Students
• Volunteers
• All other healthcare professionals

7. References
HIPAAJournal.com (2020) What Happens if a Nurse Violates HIPAA? Retrieved
from https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-happens-nurse-violates-hipaa/
Tariq RA, Hackert PB. Patient Confidentiality. [Updated 2019 Jun 18]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL):
StatPearls Publishing; 2020 Jan-.
Truevault.com (2020) How Much do HIPAA Violations Cost? Retrieved
from https://www.truevault.com/resources/compliance/how-much-do-hipaa-violations-cost