Rights and Restrictions on Patient Are According To HIPAA Essay Example
Rights and Restrictions on Patient Are According To HIPAA Essay Example

Rights and Restrictions on Patient Are According To HIPAA Essay Example

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  • Pages: 3 (625 words)
  • Published: April 3, 2022
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According to the Privacy Rule provided for by the Federal governments, there are provisions on the protection of the patients’ health and medical information by the practitioners and other stakeholders offering health services. The rule applies to all the health information of individuals may it be written, oral, video or electronic form. The law provides the various entities that must follow these privacy laws regarding the health information from the patient.

According to HIPAA, there are several kinds of information that should be protected. These are; the health information that is put in the patients’ medical record by the doctor, other healthcare providers, and the nurses. Secondly, the conversation between the doctor and the patient on the treatment programs and medications that the patient has undergone should be privately stored against access by third parties. Also, the billing information abo

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ut the patient from the clinic should be safeguarded. Lastly, all the health information that is held by all the entities under the provisions of HIPAA must strictly follow the privacy rule of preserving the privacy of the patient’s information.
Culture of Compliance; Policies and Procedures

Creating a culture of compliance regarding the patient information by the health providers, the appropriate use and disclosure of the patient information is enhanced on the part of the health providers. The compliance policies adopted by healthcare providers should cover various aspects. First, the privacy safeguards should lead. This includes the criteria for use and disclosure of the patients’ information. Secondly are the administrative safeguards which provide for the personnel in place to ensure the safety and privacy of the information. The physical safeguards should deal with locking door and file systems in

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place to ensure that the information is in safe hands. Lastly, the health providers should have a comprehensive breaching report where deficiencies on the privacy of the patients’ information are reported and dealt with appropriately.

When creating policies and procedures, various types of patient information should be put into consideration by the health providers. These issues include; what health information has been collected by the health provider from the client. Secondly, the health provider should be able to determine the modes of storage of the health information available. Additionally, it is important for the medical practitioners and health providers to identify with whom they are sharing the health information with, may it be the insurance companies or the pharmacists for appropriate medication, and so on. Lastly, the health providers should determine whether the reasons for sharing the patient information with an appropriate third party are necessary so as not to breach the privacy rule. It is thus important that health providers ensure that all possibilities that are available for breaching the code of conduct for their clients are exhausted before embarking on the privacy policies and procedure for safeguarding the privacy of the patients’ information.

Entities Covered Under HIPAA Privacy Rule

The Covered entities include health plans, that is, the healthcare insurance corporations, HMOs, government plans and government healthcare programs such as the Medicare and Medicaid. Secondly, the healthcare providers billing individual’s health insurance including the clinics, hospitals, doctors, psychologists, pharmacists and nursing homes should strictly follow the privacy rule on their clients’ health information. Lastly, the healthcare clearing houses are under supposed to follow the privacy rule when processing the health information that they receive from non-standard

entities dealing with healthcare information from their clients.

Work cited

  1. Kulynych, Jennifer, and David Korn. "The New HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) Medical Privacy Rule Help or Hindrance for Clinical Research?." Circulation 108.8 (2003): 912-914.
  2. Mercuri, Rebecca T. "The HIPAA-potamus in health care data security." Communications of the ACM 47.7 (2004): 25-28.
    http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/training/
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