HIPAA and Use of Cell Phones Analysis

HIPAA and Use of Cell Phones Analysis

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HIPAA and use of cell phones analysis

Introduction

Healthcare is readily introducing any technology available to fast track, improve patient services and to lower costs. However, it’s important to consider the impacts that come with this technology such as the violation of patient’s privacy and care. These technologies include smartphones, and social media have significantly moved healthcare provision to great lengths. These technologies include Facebook, Skype, and Twitter. Smartphones today have been used in healthcare. They provide an easy way of communication in that patients can communicate with their doctors easily and be taken care. Patients can book appointments with their respective doctors with ease today.

Social media, on the other hand, has created a gateway for patients to have a platform in which they can get health care easily and at a cheap cost. By using Skype, a patient can have a session with a doctor and therefore minimizing cost. Patients can also use them to call for emergency services. Technology also has got grave impacts in relation professional ethics, legal requirements related to data security, confidentiality, and client’s right to privacy.

HIPAA requirements and the use of cell phones

There is a particular section of the HIPAA that deals with the use of mobile phones in the delivery of health services. These devices include any other device that receives, transmits or stores PHI. HIPAA states that mobile devices that have been adopted for use in the medical field should be secure and the risk to be hacked should be little (Sneiderman & Ackerman, 2014). As such, it becomes easy to transmit patient information across databases without the risk of such information failing on the wrong hands. Additionally, any transmission systems that puts such information to risk should be abandoned for the sake of patient privacy.

It’s also important to note that there are other applications that when installing on the smartphone of the health service provider, they can access their medical database where they will then transmit the information gotten to a secondary party. Installing such an application by the health service provider is solely their responsibility (Lyles et al, 2014). And they also do so at their risk. When a medical personnel does so, and patient information is leaked, a lawsuit can be filed against them in a court of law. Therefore, if there is a need for health service providers to communicate and pass information about a patient, they should use variously identified applications that are deemed to very safe by the regulatory body.

The ending of scenario

Having taken the pictures of the famous musician, the nurse sent a few messages to her friend who had tried making her feel bad for failing to attend the concert. To sympathize with the horrible event that had happened to the musician, the friend posted the pictures on Facebook. They also sent a few of these pictures to social media application what sap (Karasz et al, 2013). The pictures, therefore, were spread quickly, and after an hour or two, various hashtags were developed to wish the musician quick recovery. However, in the hospital, the situation had escalated, and the nurse who attended to the musician was under serious investigation.

Since the pictures seemed to have been taken from the hospital, the HIPAA regulatory body was conducting an impromptu investigation through the help of the hospital management (Davenport, 2015). The investigation would help to unearth who was responsible for the breach of patient information and thus, remove the blame from the hospital. The phones of all medical staff were impounded, and they were up for investigation. The nurse who had taken the pictures was worried as she still had the pictures in her gallery. As such, she was worried as these pictures would be sufficient evidence to have her jailed.

Mitigation of the scenario

To mitigate the scenario and prevent it from ever happening again, the HIPAA regulatory body imposed new rules that called for minimal of no use of phones during their shift. If the health service provider needed to have a phone to make consultation calls, they were free to use the hospital landline (Davenport, 2015). Imposing such a measure would reduce the chances of personal smartphones from being used as means through which patient information is leaked. Additionally, the regulatory authority appealed to the ministry of health to increase funding for hospitals that would allow these hospitals to purchase the latest technology for effective communication within and outside the hospital. Such sophisticated technologies would contribute to reduced leakage of a patient medical condition.

Lastly and according to the scenario, for active mitigation, the nurse who leaked the patient information should be made to face the law. Prosecuting her for breach of patient information will lead to the other medical practitioners from refraining from doing such an action ever again in future (Sneiderman & Ackerman, 2014). Through such mitigation, the patients will be secure that their information is safe when with the medical service providers.

Advantages and disadvantages of using smartphones and social media in healthcare.

Coming up to smartphones in the health sector and there various integration regarding the health care sector has pushed a lot of advancement in the sector. Today medics can integrate their smartphones together with the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Integration of the gadget has provided the efficiency of monitoring the progress of the patients remotely. The medics are not necessarily supposed to be there for them to know the status of their patients (Lyles et al, 2014).

Smartphones are small in nature and can be carried around easily. Communication is a major important factor in healthcare set up. Smartphones are easily used to communicate by the medics for instance exchange of emails within a hospital to confirm certain important issues in carrying out their daily to daily duties. At a certain point the medics may be unsure of the equipment they need to use, but with the coming up of smartphones, they can quickly send images and vice versa to enable them to achieve a common goal of success (Davenport, 2015).

However, the coming up of smartphones and its use in delivering services has come up with various shortcomings. In the current generation, the use of smartphone has brought about the addictive factor due to their use regarding social media (Karasz et al, 2013). Users are mostly on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp communicating on irrelevant issues in most scenarios. Healthcare service providers have lost their concentration while delivering their services due to the overuse of the gadgets.

All information that is found in a healthcare set up is considered as personal and classified between the medics and the patient. The confidentiality of the information has been limited by the use of a smartphone in that the medics can easily leak information to the social media in case of patients who are regarded as a public figure (Davenport, 2015).

Conclusion

As seen above, the use of smartphones and social media in the healthcare industry has its pros and cons. It’s, therefore, important to be careful when it comes to their use. Health service providers should adhere to the laid down guidelines that will enable them to provide quality services to those seeking medical services. To prevent occurrences where there is a breach of privacy for the patient, it’s important to inform all medical service providers what is required of them. To continuously ensure they observe these guidelines, there should be continuous training and assessment of the medical service providers.

References

Davenport, C. (2015). Analysis of PDAs in nursing: Benefits and barriers. Retrieved January, 26, 2015.

Karasz, H. N., Eiden, A., & Bogan, S. (2013). Text messaging to communicate with public health audiences: how the HIPAA Security Rule affects practice. American journal of public health, 103(4), 617-622.

Lyles, C. R., Harris, L. T., Le, T., Flowers, J., Tufano, J., Britt, D., … & Ralston, J. D. (2014). Qualitative evaluation of a mobile phone and web-based collaborative care intervention for patients with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes technology & therapeutics, 13(5), 563-569.

Sneiderman, C. A., & Ackerman, M. J. (2014). Cellular radio telecommunication for health care: benefits and risks.