Free Essay. Healthcare Breach on Medical Records

Healthcare breach on medical records is the act of unauthorized, access, or sharing a patient's health records without their knowledge. Such cases have increased all over the world where doctors share their patients' health and personal information to a third party. According to the research that was conducted in 2019 by the healthcare sector, the number of cases on patients medical records bleach has increased compared to the previous years(Goreva et al., 2016). Most of the patients' data are compromised in various ways like doctors provide unauthorized protected patients' information to a third party. The systems containing the information may be hacked, resulting in the misappropriation of patients personal health records.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The stolen medical data can lead to criminal activities like patients' coercion and extortion, especially to patients with long term diseases such as sexually transmitted diseases into doing what the criminal wants. Through medical data, criminals can steal a patient's identity and use it to benefit themselves by asking for health funds from banks and donors (Meisner, 2017). According to the Federal HIPAA Security Rule (Nass et al., & Institute of Medicine, 2009), physicians are required to safeguard electronic health records using proper electronic and physical precautions to guarantee the safety of health data. Severe penalties and fines for anyone or organization found violating the HIPAA rules have been structured and established for both doctors and non-healthcare people (Cook, 2020). Therefore, for hospitals to avoid health care data breach in future, they should set access controls like passwords or PIN numbers that should only be known to the authorized persons like doctors and nurses. People working in information technology departments in the facilities should be trained how to detect phishing attacks and increase networks security to protect and reduce data breaches caused by employee error (Blake et al., 2017). For example, accidental disclosure or lost device, to prevent patients' information from being read once someone has found their way into the hospital's systems.

References

Blake, L., Francis, V., Johnson, J., Khan, M., & McCray, T. (2017). Developing robust data management strategies for unprecedented challenges to healthcare information. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 14(1). doi.org/10.33423/jlae.v14i1.1611

Cook, O. B. (2020). Unintended consequences of electronic medical records: An emergency room ethnography. Lanham : Lexington Books, [2020] 2020. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1142212627

Goreva, N., Mishra, S., Draus, P., Bromall, G., & Caputo, D. (2016). A study of the security of electronic medical records utilizing six knowledge categories and subjects demographics. International Journal of Management & Information Systems (IJMIS), 20(3), 51-58. doi.org/10.19030/ijmis.v20i3.9738

Meisner, M. (2017). Financial consequences of cyber attacks leading to data breaches in healthcare sector. Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting, 6(3), 63-73.doi.org/10.12775/CJFA.2017.017

Nass, S. J., Levit, L. A., Gostin, L. O., & Institute of Medicine (U.S.). (2009). Beyond the HIPAA privacy rule: Enhancing privacy, improving health through research. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/300397055