1. MHA:690
Discussion 2
Hospitals should ensure a better safety computer system when patient’s medical records
are concerned. It shouldn’t matter if you are a celebrity or not, violating any patient’s
medical or personal information should be considered a violation of the patient’s privacy
rights and/or a crime. Hospitals and medical centers should take better precautions to
ensure that patient’s medical records are kept confidential. There are laws put into place
to better help control a patients confidentiality, but there always seems to be
confidentiality rules broken when it comes to patient’s medical records or personal
information. Each staff member should be trained annually/semi-annually on the HIPAA
rules and regulations and patients confidentiality. The training should allow employees
to share examples of how they might feel if their confidentiality was violated or what
steps the medical center should take if this should ever happen. Any staff member that
violates this policy should be fired and maybe even reframed from working in the
medical field.
I believe that a patient should have the right to sue the medical center as
well as the employee who violated the confidentiality law. (Goldman, 2008) Providing
this confidentiality training to each employee can help eliminate or reduce the breach of
clients information, the loss of a customer’s business, and the financial loss or criminal
case that a client may bring against company as well as the individual employee who
violated the privacy rights. Employees should also be trained on knowing how to protect
passwords, shredding material that is no longer needed by the facility, and reviewing the
privacy and policy rights and asking questions about things that a staff is not sure of is
helpful when training every employee.
Reference:
Goldman, J. (2008). Protecting privacy to improve health care.