Electronic medical records, HIPAA regulations, and patient privacy protection

¶ … Portability vs. Privacy

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) refers to the digital version of papers containing all the medical history of a patient. EMRs are mostly applied in healthcare institutions for treatment and diagnosis.

Benefits of Electronic Medical Records

The following are some of the benefits associated with electronic medical records (Thede, 2010). EMRs are more efficient than paper records because they encourage providers to:

Track patient's data over time

Spot clients who are due for screening and preventive visits

Conduct patient monitoring to measure their parameters including blood pressure and vaccinations

HIPAA Regulations and EMR

The federal government passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that led to the emergence of national standards for the security of medical records. HIPAA regulations and laws were introduced to ensure that patients exercise much control over their medical records, benchmark on the limits of accessing patients' medical records, and erect a caseload of privacy safeguards for caregivers. As care providers shift to EMR systems, the privacy of patients falls under HIPAA regulations and laws. These provisions grant patients with a number of privacy rights on key medical records. Under HIPAA rule of patient privacy, patients are entitled to the right of viewing their medical records. They can request to have a copy of their medical file. In addition, patients are entitled to know if and how caregivers are using their medical data for other purposes. Care providers must seek for patient clarification before disclosing their personal information (Jacques, 2011).

As the EMR systems expand, all HIPAA regulations continue to be applied in the medical industry. Besides the benefits of easy sharing of patient information, improved accuracy and reduced costs, EMR system has the potential to bring patient privacy. If the medical records are computerized, app parties accessing medical data records will be computerized and recorded. This system comes with an audit trail that tracks individuals accessing electronic patient records. This oversight of patient privacy has garnered broad support. On the other hand, paper medical records make it difficult to have an accurate track of people viewing patients' files (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2012).

Patients must have control over the disclosure of their medical records. Whether it done with good or bad intentions. Electronic medical records provide ease of limiting the disclosure of data to essential elements. There are numerous reasons for disclosing medical records including insurance checks, treatment needs and employment requirements. However, clients will not reveal all aspects of their medical information all the time. Caregivers with properly computerized medical records have the ease of removing extraneous health details as they disclose EMR. HIPAA regulations articulate that employers and life insurance are exempted from the privacy laws of these EMR (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2012).

The security of medical records

Various groups opposing electronic medical records have expressed worries over EMR security and privacy because of the threat of phishing. Their arguments are based on the issue that increased online data availability makes electronic medical records more prone to phishing attacks. However, in light of this matter, industry practitioners have erected several measures to curb this (Thede, 2010). The most effective measure is data encryption. This technology safeguards electronic patients medical data while being transferred thus ensuring only the intended recipients view the records. In addition, health providers and hospitals have created firewalls across their computer networks. Firewalls refer to a strong line of defense placed in front of the medical records security. They are helpful in blocking unwarranted access to computer systems serving EMR systems. Through HIPAA's patient privacy standards, various medical records security measures have been instituted to assist curb the privacy of electronic medical records. Nevertheless, patients have been encouraged to talk to their caregivers in order to ensure the highest level of possible security based on their confidentiality and privacy preferences (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2012).

A number of care providers treat infrastructure security and privacy monitoring independently. Separate teams are charged with the responsibility of performing the functions by employing separate tools. Compliance and privacy teams perform a special function in monitoring privacy solutions to check on patient's privacy and ensure healthcare institutions adhere to government regulations such as HIPAA (Jacques, 2011). Privacy monitoring efforts have focused on scenarios violating patient privacy. The integrity of IT infrastructures is under the responsibility of IT security team. The IT infrastructure is safeguarded through leveraging event management solutions and security information. The solutions handle systems and network vulnerabilities to safeguard against external and internal threats. Security and privacy tightly interplay to treat security and privacy monitoring separately to block internal and external threats. Security officers and privacy officers are all mandated to ensure the integrity of systems and patient privacy (Thede, 2010).

Conclusion

Patient privacy has become a major issue in the current health care provision industry. Safeguarding the integrity, availability and confidentiality of patient medical records has ceased to a goal. Instead, it has become a legal requirement. Maintaining pace with the always-advancing government regulations is a resource intensive and expansive proposition. However, the adoption of HIPAA laws and regulations has made it easy to implement Electronic Medical Records system (Jacques, 2011).