Question

Explain the difference between health information patient privacy and confidentiality including which construct is more important during a disaster and why.

Answer 1

Distinct trends have increased access to the health record and concerns about privacy. One has to do with primary health records how they are created and maintained. The other involves health records stored electronically.

The quantity and type of health care information now collected has also increased drastically. The participation in health care delivery of many different individuals and groups exerts strong pressures to document in greater detail.

The information on lifestyle, family history, and health status are of greater interest and relevance as we learn about the relationship of these factors to health and well being. Genetic data are more readily available, not only for prenatal testing but for assessing an individual's degree of risk for an inherited condition.

The documentation of care and risk factors are essential to promoting of care over time and providers. Other trends give rise to particular concerns about the confidentiality of health information that is stored electronically. The ability to access, transmit, and copy large volumes of data easily. Photocopying paper records is, possible, but it is hardly feasible for large numbers of geographically dispersed medical records.

The databases were at one time discrete and often held in physically secure rooms on tape drives with identifiers that were unique to a given institution. The data from diverse sources can be combined and linked. Once data are stored electronically, networks of databases can be explored imperceptibly from remote locations.

The computer based health data have become a very valuable commodity. Some obtain information from physicians' computers and pharmacy records in return for incentives such as low cost computer hardware and software.

There are companies who resell information from prescription or claims databases to companies that sort it by physician for marketing purposes. Health Information Technologies, automate private physicians' insurance claims. When it transmits claims and payments between the insurance company and the physician, it retains electronic copies of these records, which can later be sold.

The developers have compared claims transmitted to electronic funds transfer, which is helpful to examine how the Privacy Protection Study Commission regarded confidentiality. The commissioners were informed about the problems that might result if records created could not be controlled by institutions.

They urged that adequate protections be established for person identifiable information flowing through a data communications network and that such account information be retained for as limited a period of time as it was essential to fulfill operating requirements.

The desire for informational privacy has become an important expectation. Information may be created as a byproduct of some event. An individual's geographic location becomes available when he or she uses a bank card for a financial transaction.

Confidentiality relates to disclosure and nondisclosure of information. Confidentiality has arisen with respect to information disclosed in the context of a confidential relationship, between an individual and his or her physician, attorney, or priest. In such relationships, the confidante is under an obligation not to disclose the information learned in the course of the relationship.

The protected sphere of the patient provider relationship, it is not always clear who is rightly in the community, nor is there universal agreement on principles that ought to control disclosure.

Wide ranging claims of need for sensitive health information, which are of modern health care, raise difficult problems for the preservation of privacy and maintenance of confidentiality. Patients generally understand that, information in their medical records will be shared widely within a hospital and for insurance and reimbursement purposes.