Essay: The violation of patient confidentiality

The violation of patient confidentiality is a significant global challenge to the provision of adequate medical services. The breach of patient confidentiality involves the unauthorized access of third parties to confidential patient information. While some of the challenges of this nature stem from weak structural systems that manage medical records in the health facilities, there are many circumstances in which unethical service providers deliberately leak such information to unauthorized individuals. Many organizations have put strategies in place to manage medical record in hospitals. However, the threat of human interference remains one of the most challenging problems that organizations are struggling to contain (Price, 2015). It requires the coordination of a wide range of organizations to restore the integrity of patient records in an organization. The government, the management of health facilities as well as the professional bodies play a significant role in the creation of policies and practice that enhance the maintenance of patient confidentiality.
In the recent past, there has been a massive improvement in the utilization of technology in healthcare. In modern health facilities, all the patient records are maintained electronically. The traditional use of paper files to keep patient records proved to be counterproductive to the efforts that are being implemented by organizations to manage them and possibly improve the functional efficiency of the systems to protect patient information. The robust implementation of various technologies to enhance patient confidentiality has been the pillar that has to contribute to the effectiveness of managing patient confidentiality. Technologies are not without flaws. There are technical vulnerabilities that characterize the techniques. Additionally, the current legal framework has not adequately addressed the emerging technologies, and that has affected the implementation of patient confidentiality in many jurisdictions. The presence of human resource management weaknesses, inadequate legal frameworks and the vulnerabilities of technology present massive challenges to patient confidentiality. Finding the solution to these problems requires collaboration from a wide range of stakeholders.
Solutions to patient confidentiality breach
Hospital policy is the foundation of efficient management of patient confidentiality. Many of the health organizations that have been successful in protecting patent information have implemented efficient, practical strategies that guide the management of patient records. In any organization, there are standards of conduct that govern the behavior of all employees. In medical practice, each organization has its set of policies that govern its operations. The development of standards of conduct is critical to the creation of an environment where all the employees understand their roles and the expectations. Since human errors, whether deliberate or honest, pose the biggest threats to the management of employee record in an organization, it behooves the control of the medical organization to develop the most appropriate standards for the medical and non-medical staff.
Adhering to relevant patient-data management laws is another way in which hospital management teams may make sure that all employees treat employee information diligently and with tremendous respect for the right to privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provides for the standards that hospitals must live up to concerning the need to protect patient information. Since technology has replaced the old data management approaches, the law compels organizations to seek the best data management principles that will best protect the patient data.
The first approach to using technology to protect patient information is to consider the individual who has the medical records. Technology should provide a restricted approach to the management of patient information. In many cases, organizations intend to make sure that it is only a limited number of individuals in the organization that have access to patient records. The fewer the number of individuals handling patient information the higher the level of security of patient data. When there is limited access, it is easy to regulate the systems and establish the liability when there is a breach of patient databases (Wallace, 2015). On the other side, the presence of a large number of users who have access to patient databases makes regulation difficult as much as it also makes it challenging to establish guilt when there is a system breach.
The culture of treating patient data securely lacks in many organizations. Organizational culture is one of the critical aspects of a well-ordered organization. The presence of a culture that minds about the security of patient data play a vital role in making sure that all the direct users of such information take a keen interest in making sure that the data is safe. Starting from the leadership of a whole entity, there is a need to create awareness among all employee concerning the protection of patient information. For example, all the users of patient data must be made aware that they always secure their desk-top log-ins as well as making sure that they log out of the systems when they are not using the systems. It is only in this way that users of patient data can deter third-party intrusion from their systems. In many cases, unauthorized persons have managed to get into contact with patient data when users of information systems fail to secure them or when the users unintentionally reveal their security passwords. The creation of a culture of security awareness among all users of patient information is likely to contribute to the successful protection of patent information.
Patients have an interest in seeing that their information is accurately captured and stored. Asa result, a significant number of them usually want to get in touch with their data. In the recent time, there has been an increase in the number of patients who would want to view their electronic health records. Since there is increased interaction between medical service providers and their patients, the facilities have resorted to creating accounts for the patients where they can use mobile phone applications to view their electronic health records (Sulmasy et al, 2017). While the primary purpose of the organizations is to make sure that patient information is safe, it is equally necessary to instill confidence among the patients that their records are reliable.
Patient health records play an important role in research practices. When medical students do clinical research studies, they always rely on patient information as data sources. There are rules and regulation that regulate the access of medical records for experiments. In all cases, organizations must make sure that students obtain consent from the students before they get access to such pieces of information. Most preferably, organizations must insist the students obtain written approvals to the researchers or students to gain access to such parts of data. In this way, patient information will be released procedurally and in a way that will serve the interests of all parties.
In conclusion, the issue of breach of patient confidentiality is an issue that concerns many healthcare providers. While many healthcare providers have instituted a wide range of policies to secure patient information, there is still a massive breach of such critical data. As a result, many hospitals have had to deal with court cases from patients who are aggrieved by the unfortunate events. From this examination, it has emerged that the protection of patient health information is a global challenge that requires a contribution from a wide range of stakeholders. The coordination of the efforts of these parties is essential in making sure that there is an improvement in the safety of patient data.