Information Technology Impact on Health Care Systems

Recent news headlines featured executives from Facebook and Twitter addressing individual privacy violations and data breaches. In the healthcare field, the right to privacy and consent to treatment is not new and actually dates back to the Hippocratic oath. However, on a recent visit to a physician’s office, do you recall the sign in process? Did you give your name and birth date orally to a clerk? Or did you sign a form and include your date of birth and/or other personal information on the sign-in sheet, for everyone to see? Could you see the names and personal information of people that signed in before you? These are examples of how your private information can be shared, accidentally, with others. Thus, client privacy and informed consent violations are not limited to companies such as Facebook and Twitter,  but to health and human services organizations as well.

Advances in technology and multiple service providers, for example, doctors, case managers, etc, have increased the potential of a data breach risk associated with the sharing of patient protected health information (PHI). The Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is responsible for oversight and enforcement of HIPAA regulations. Every year OCR regulators sanction and penalize healthcare organizations for violating patient privacy.

What are the most common types of data breaches?  Examples of accidental disclosure of patients’ protected health information (PHI) could be mailing out flyers with PHI, unauthorized access to PHI via an employee email, discussing PHI in the hallway, hacking of computer systems, loss of laptops containing patient information, or medical records found in dumpsters.  The purpose of this assignment is to understand, recognize, analyze, and evaluate PHI laws and data breach cases and their risk implications for local healthcare organizations. The fines and penalties are not limited to the organization, but as you will see in this assignment, can be assessed against employees of the organization such as case managers, social workers, nurses, counselors, etc.

Directions

A. Information Technology Impact on Health Care Systems.

Provide an analysis of the following two Acts and their impact on healthcare systems:

1. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
2. The Title II Administrative Simplification Act.

Length

Your analysis should include at least 2 paragraphs for each of the above items and include a description of each, as well as their impact on health information systems and protection of patient privacy.

B. Go to the HIPAA Journal website (Links to an external site.)

There you will find data breach cases posted by month and day.

1. Select a data breach case:Based on your month of birth, select a data breach case from the HIPAA Journal website. In your description of the data breach, include the following information: (3 paragraphs)
   1. Organization and location
   2. Type of service(s) provided by the organization
   3. Type of breach (which section of the HIPAA law was violated)
   4. Time period over which breach occurred
   5. Number of and type of clients impacted
   6. Recommendation actions to resolve the case, including any fines or penalties
2. Conclusion: Based on the type of organization that committed the breach, select another local organization for which the possible violation is possible. Identify the organization and include a recommendation that they should implement to avoid breach of client/patient data by their employees. (one paragraph)

For example: In August 2018, the New Mexico Department of Health experienced a breach of PHI when medical records in transit to a storage facility fell from a truck and were found on the streets. If you worked at the Duval County Health Department as a case manager, this case can be used as lesson learned for the risk management department to re-examine the security and securing of medical records by its contract company that transports medical records.

Note: The conclusion should be a minimum of 2 paragraphs and should tie together Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the assignment.

Format

1. Use APA format and cite sources, as necessary. If you need a refresher on APA, reference the APA Library Guide (located in Student Resources in the Course Orientation).Make sure that your paper is not plagiarized and includes all the appropriate citations and references.
2. Use Times Roman – 12-point font.
3. Use double space.
4. Use professional objective, language.
5. The assignment must include:
   1. Cover Page
   2. Introduction (one paragraph)
   3. Content of Assignment
   4. Reference Page

Grading

This assignment will be graded using the Written Assignment Rubric. It is worth 150 points. Use the information in the rubric as a guide toward successful completion of the module Written Assignment Rubric.

Rubric