Question

Formulate education for the public and consumers on privacy, security, access to and maintenance of personal health records (PHRs), requirements and legalities.

Description:

You are the Chief Information Officer at a hospital in your community. There have been some issues in the community with identity theft. Because of this new threat, you have been tasked with developing a business continuity plan in the event data is breached at your hospital. Additionally, you will be required to educate leadership at the hospital on the threat and the business continuity plan.

Answer 1

MAINTENANCE OF PERSONAL HEALTH RECORDS (PHRs) REQUIREMENTS AND LEGALITIES :

Personal health records are used for the legal documentation in health care services, which are provided by a person at the time of admission in any health care organizations. Personal records includes identification data of persons which are stored as documentation purposes to provide health care services to the patients.

Personal health records play an important role in the hospital settings, where all the personal information of patients, doctors, nurses, medical staff and non medical professionals to be stored at one place for easy referrals and for providing continuity in health care. Due to the technical advancements and increase of scams there are being hacking of personal data is taking place. In simple words, it is described as Identity Theft. Privacy and confidentiality should be maintained while maintaining personal health records. If any identity threats are happening in the organization critical legal issues arise, as the information consists of private information of patients (i.e , Name, Address, Aadhar number, Pan number, Voter ID, Date of birth, Photo, Working details, Salary statements, etc) which can be easily by the hackers for misusing that data in illegal activities.

EDUCATING PUBLIC AND CONSUMERS ON PRIVACY AND SECURITY ACCESS IN MAINTAINING PERSONAL HEALTH RECORDS :

Being a chief information officer at a hospital it is my responsibility to aware people on identity threats, protecting of their personal information from being stolen. Educations that have to be provided to the public and customers are as follows :

* Creating awareness to public on current technologies in storing of personal information

* Permanent health information portal dealing with medical and personal records, which public can access by their own through privacy concerns.

* Improve decision making of public, which system they are easy with and what improvements they need in storing personal information

* Training to public and consumers on the limited usage of personal health information

* Allotting tasks to various team members in community to deal with education with public

* Education on HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability And Accountability) and security related guidelines

* Dividing of team members into groups for this task and to achieve maximum goals to prevent identity threats

* Explaining about legal and court related orders in documenting private information of patient.

Hence, by creating awareness and educating public and consumers, safety can be accessed in protecting sensitive information of patients from being hacked.