HIPAA Violation Healthcare Ethics and Mediacl Law : Case Study
Added on 2020-05-28
10 Pages2797 Words77 Views
Running head: HIPAA VIOLATION HEALTHCARE ETHICS AND MEDICAL LAWName of the StudentName of the UniversityAuthor note
1HIPAA VIOLATION Introduction The Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information was establishedthat helped to create a set of national standards for the protection of certain health informations.The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) distributed the privacyrules and implemented the privacy policy to fulfill the requirement of the Health InsurancePortability and Accountability Act 1996 (HIPAA) (HHS, 2018). According to this rule, the useand disclosure of individual’s health information is prohibitory as it is termed as ‘coveredentities’ moreover, it provides the patient with the opportunity of enforcement, breachnotification and security rights (Rodrigues et al., 2013). In the case study, breaching of suchprivacy is mentioned, where the obstetrics nurse disclosed a 15-year-old girl’s identity, whoadmitted to hospital after severe labor. The nurse further contacted the higher authority to resignfrom her duties and stated all her mistakes. She was aware of the fact that by disclosing theidentity of the young pregnant patient, she has breached the privacy policy by HIPAA. Thisassignment will be discussing specific requirements to perform the investigation of the study.Further, this assignment will identify the incident as actually breaching of privacy or not. Thestance of the hospital about the breaching complies with the HIPAA rules or not will bediscussed in details. Finally, my take on the situation, as the privacy officer in the organizationwill be discussed. Thesis Statement This assignment will focus to align the case study provided with the HIPAA law tounderstand the situations of healthcare privacy breaching and necessary actions that needs to betaken.
2HIPAA VIOLATION Investigation process of breaching According to the HIPAA rules for privacy protection of patients, there is a flow ofprocess, which need to be followed in case of breaching of HIPAA norms. Breaching should beinvestigated as breaking the privacy rules or disclosing the identity of the patient can lead tohigher risk in the society. The covered entity or the patient, whose identity has been disclosed,can provide the organization with required notification about breaching. Further, undergoing riskassessment to confirm the health information breaching would not be necessary in such situation(Wang & Huang, 2013). However, if the risk assessment procedure is followed, few factors needto be assessed such as the type of information disclosed or importance of that identification to re-identify the person. The second issue that need to be assessed is to identify the person theidentification was disclosed, as it determines the severity of breaching. The third issue thatshould be kept in mind is the information disclosed to a third person, was acquired or viewed bythe accused or was correct. This issue is also critical as acquired perception about the patient canharm his/her social image. The final topic that need to be mentioned in the risk assessment isabout the severity of the protected information, breaching of which can affect the life of patient(Rodrigues et al., 2013). In the mentioned case study, the 15-year-old girl, whose identity has been disclosed, didnot know about the breaching of the privacy rules. The patient hid her pregnancy from herfamily, despite of the fact that her mother and aunt both are nurses in the hospital. Therefore, itwas mandatory for the hospital authority to maintain her privacy. However, as per the statementof the Obstetrics (OB) nurse, she disclosed the identity of the patient to he daughter, whoidentified the girl. Therefore, in such case, a notification should be given to the OB nurse,seeking the reason and situation of the breaching (Wang & Huang, 2013). The patient should be
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