Healthcare Privacy: Reviewing Patient Rights and the Privacy Act 1988

This report provides an overview of patient rights, privacy, and confidentiality within the healthcare system, with a specific focus on the Privacy Act 1988 in Australia. It highlights the importance of protecting patient information and the role of healthcare professionals in maintaining privacy. The report discusses the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) and the 'My health record system' as mechanisms for securing patient data. A critical review of the Privacy Act 1988 identifies both its strengths in ensuring patient privacy and potential weaknesses related to complexities that may hinder timely treatment. The report concludes by emphasizing the relevance of the Act to nursing practice, enabling practitioners to adhere to government regulations and respect patient rights while delivering healthcare services.

Patient right, privacy and
confidentiality:

Privacy:
 Privacy is one of the most important element in healthcare process
where patient have right to ensure privacy and hide their
confidential information.
 Privacy is biggest concern in health care process where health care
professional and authority have to keep personal information of
patient safe from any kind of issue (Watts and Casanovas, 2019).
 There are many cases where breaching of privacy have become
issue for health care process, patient have certain right and right to
privacy is crucial right of every patient.

The Privacy Act 1988:
 Under The Privacy Act 1988, Australian government have cleared
every details regarding privacy of patient, health care professional
and other member of the authority.
 Under Australian Privacy Principle (APP), health care provider need
to keep data of patient safe in ‘My health record system’ which
allow health care provider to perform security of data (Hardy and
Maurushat, 2017).
 Patient information may include personal data like name, address,
contact details and other personal information which need to be
secure by the authority.

Critical review:
 Privacy is common right of patient, The Privacy Act 1988 define
certain set of regulation for health care provider to ensure privacy of
patient, there are certain other policy and department that work
together to ensure privacy.
 For example Australian Digital Health Agency that work as cyber
security centre which digital record of patient’s personal information
which is high confidential.
 This department is responsible to cover security of data on digital
basis; any kind of breach may lead to violation of guideline provided
by this department. There are certain strength and weakness, these are:

Strength and weakness and relevance to
practice
 Strength of The Privacy Act 1988 lies in ensuring privacy of patient,
health care professional and other worker, this act focus on
betterment of health care structure (Treasure, 2018).
 This act work as key element for patient if any kind of breach occur
during treatment, strength lies in rules provided by government and
insurance amount if breach occur.
 Under this act, there are certain other regulation as well for example
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to ensure
personal information is store in secure manner avoiding any kind of
violation to data of patient.

Cont…
 weakness of The Privacy Act 1988 lies in too much complication,
sometimes assessing personal information of patient become
challenging and delay in timely treatment.
 There are many cases where privacy become issue in providing
treatment as gathering personal information is quite challenging task.
 The Privacy Act 1988 is relevant to nursing practice that allow
practitioner to ensure they follow rules provided by the government,
every health care professional know that patient have certain right that
allow them to gain max. benefit out of heath care service.

CONCLUSION
 This report has discussed privacy and patient right to ensure
privacy in the health care process.
 Later this report has discussed The Privacy Act 1988 that allow
health care professional and authority to ensure privacy of patient
while providing them treatment.
 At last this report has discussed strength and weakness of act
related to nursing practice.

REFERENCES
 Books and journals
 Watts, D. and Casanovas, P., 2019. Privacy and Data Protection in
Australia: a critical overview. In W3C Workshop on Privacy and
Linked Data. World Wide Web
 Hardy, K. and Maurushat, A., 2017. Opening up government data
for Big Data analysis and public benefit. Computer law &
security review, 33(1), pp.30-37. Consortium.
 Treasure, R., 2018. Legal technology: Eyes in the sky, and all
around: Computer vision threatens current notions of
privacy. Proctor, The, 38(5), pp.34-35.