Medical Office Procedures
Medical Profession Responsibilities
Medical Profession Responsibilities
This paper will discuss the federal law that governs Protected Health Information (PHI) and the elements of compliance that must be met. This paper will also describe two examples of improper privacy disclosure and some challenges a medical office might have maintaining strict confidentiality.
The federal law that governs Protected Health Information (PHI) is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 ("Summary of the,"). HIPAA’s goal is to simplify the administrative processes of the healthcare system and to protect patients’ privacy ("HIPAA compliance,"). The Privacy Rule of HIPAA plays an important role being that it was designed to protect personal information as it travels through the healthcare system. The organizations that must comply with this rule are providers, payers, and healthcare organizations. HIPAA has standards that every organization must comply with including administrative procedures, technical security mechanisms and services and physical safeguards ("HIPAA compliance,").
For example to comply with administrative procedures healthcare organizations must implement policies and procedures in their workforce to ensure security of electronic protected health information to only those who are authorized and prevent those who are not along with performing periodic evaluation of the entity’s security policies and procedures. An example of compliance in the technical security mechanisms and services would be making sure that entity is encrypting or decrypting PHI, using automatic logoffs, using software that records the activity in information systems that use or has PHI. For an organization to comply with the physical safeguards they must implement policies and procedures that will explain how and what to do with removable media and hardware and what the proper functions that need to be performed in the workstation.
Two examples of improper
Medical Profession Responsibilities
This paper will discuss the federal law that governs Protected Health Information (PHI) and the elements of compliance that must be met. This paper will also describe two examples of improper privacy disclosure and some challenges a medical office might have maintaining strict confidentiality.
The federal law that governs Protected Health Information (PHI) is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 ("Summary of the,"). HIPAA’s goal is to simplify the administrative processes of the healthcare system and to protect patients’ privacy ("HIPAA compliance,"). The Privacy Rule of HIPAA plays an important role being that it was designed to protect personal information as it travels through the healthcare system. The organizations that must comply with this rule are providers, payers, and healthcare organizations. HIPAA has standards that every organization must comply with including administrative procedures, technical security mechanisms and services and physical safeguards ("HIPAA compliance,").
For example to comply with administrative procedures healthcare organizations must implement policies and procedures in their workforce to ensure security of electronic protected health information to only those who are authorized and prevent those who are not along with performing periodic evaluation of the entity’s security policies and procedures. An example of compliance in the technical security mechanisms and services would be making sure that entity is encrypting or decrypting PHI, using automatic logoffs, using software that records the activity in information systems that use or has PHI. For an organization to comply with the physical safeguards they must implement policies and procedures that will explain how and what to do with removable media and hardware and what the proper functions that need to be performed in the workstation.
Two examples of improper
References: HIPAA compliance. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.secureworks.com/compliance/comp/hipaa.html Summary of the HIPAA privacy rule. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/summary/index.html