2. Breaching patient privacy and confidentiality is a serious
issue in healthcare today. It occurs at many healthcare
organizations at varying degrees. Breaching patient privacy
has many negative effects on an organization. As a
manager, generally speaking I would ensure that my staff
were aware of the organization’s HIPAA policies and that
they would fall in compliance with signing the attestation
that they have read and understood the policies and the
consequences to breaking the policies.
3. I would include the consequences of breaching patient privacy and
explain that they may include a simple write up and possible
termination depending on the severity of the infraction. Human
resources together with the health information management
department are typically responsible for disseminating and educating
staff. I would also explain that random audits are conducted to
ensure that employees are only looking at patient files necessary to
do perform their job. Compliance of HIPAA could be addressed by
annual education, discussion included in the new hire process and
quarterly newsletters reminding employees about the important of
maintaining patient privacy (Rechtman, & Rashbaum, 2015).
4. Organizations may pay a significant fine for failing to secure
patient records. Examples of this include, Columbia
University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital were fined a
combined $4.8 million in 2014 for failing to secure the health
records of more than 6,000 patients (Pyrillis, 2015).
5. References
• Pyrillis, R. (2015). HIPAA Crackdown on Security Hacks. Workforce,
94(5), 15.
• Rechtman, Y., & Rashbaum, K. (2015). HIPAA Security Rule -
Demystified. CPA Journal, 85(4), 68-70.
