Organizational Responsibility and Current Health

Organizational Responsibility and Current Health Care Issues

One situation that the health care industry is facing today is the fact that it is just starting to adapt technology. Unlike other industries, the healthcare industry, in general, has been way behind in this aspect. Hospitals and clinics still, by and large, store personal health information on paper in files, however, as digitization becomes more and more the trend of the future, healthcare organizations will be also adapting this method. While this will make the work of many hospital staff -- including doctors and nurses -- much easier, it will also -- undoubtedly -- bring up problems related to confidentiality (Kumekawa 2005). Online health care is also becoming a current trend in the industry and it has been the topic of many news stories in recent history. This will mean that the overall nature of health care will change for not only doctors and nurses but for the patients as well.

There are several ethical issues that come into play when considering digitization and online health care. First of all, doctors and hospitals having more of an online presence will have more contact with their patients and this can change the nature of the physician/patient relationship. Aspects will have to be dealt with concerning what type of contact online will be appropriate. There are groups of patients with like illnesses or medical challenges that have created social media groups where they can discuss their health challenges and this could also be another way in which groups of people can keep in contact with their medical providers; however, it does pose some questions, ethically speaking. Should patients and doctors be engaging in social media together?

It will be up to hospital administration to decide and to track this kind of contact. With an abundance of "e-patients" that will be coming out of the woodwork, administrators are going to have to decide how they are going to deal with this future trend. There could be several areas in which hospitals can find themselves in trouble -- ethically speaking, again -- when it comes to doctor/patient contact -- i.e., what is appropriate and what is not.

Security issues will also become quite important in the future as hospitals and other medical centers adopt greater technology. There are strict HIPAA standards that hospitals must live up to and social media sites and other e-contact could be a violation of these standards. With greater technology comes the likelihood of new types of security breaches, which will mean that the hospital must have a very savvy it department to make sure that there are not any security issues having to do with information leaks, etc.