Policy On Confidentiality And Privacy Of Health Information

Task 1

The policy on the confidentiality as well as privacy of health information is been developed by the practice manager:

Privacy and confidentiality of health information is been defined as the information which concerns health, medical history which is undergone by the patient currently and past. This medical history helps in identification of the patients and it incorporates information of the patient wish regarding the present as well as future services of health (Bourgeois et al. 2015). Every General Practitioners (GP) as well as practice staff must ensure that issues on health should be discussed by patients with them.

Informing new patients should be done by GP as they will discuss about the privacy policy regarding the practice to the patients who are very new to it. The new patients will be provided with the leaflet of the practice containing personal information and privacy (Weimer, David, and Aidan 2017). The will also be provided with the offers for accessing the policy of practice information. This ensures that privacy on the information of the patient is appropriate.

The access of patients to their health information is under the provision of the privacy legislation where every patient has their rights of accessing the information of health which are been stored for practice. GP is responsible for providing accurate summary on the health information when required (Turvey et al. 2014). GP will be considering all the requests which are been made by the patients for accessing their own health record.

The alteration of patient records is been practiced by altering the information regarding the health of the patient on the request made by patient. The alteration like changing the address or the contact number can be done on the request made by the patient. GP will note the record of the patient whose records are to be changed.

Access of patients to the health information by the practice staff for research, quality improvement as well as professional development. New patients are been informed about the practices which undergoes the above stated activities depending on time for improving practice management as well as healthcare of the community.

Confidentiality of the agreement is done in order to safeguard the information of personal privacy of patients. This practices is been performed by temporary as well as casual staff, subcontractors like the service providers and also by medical students who signs the agreement of the confidentiality (Ventola 2014).

In the case of disclosure to the third parties both GP as well as the staff should ensure that the health information of the patient which are personal are been disclosed to third parties only if patient has the consent of it. If any exceptions are been taking place for this rule then it is required for managing the disclosure as it can impose serious threats on the welfare of patients. GP should refer this disclosure to the appropriate legislation before patient take any decisions.

Requests for Personal Health Information and medical records by other medical practices- This gives the patient the access to appropriate updated information by a new GP and GP should also provide excellent health care facility. This practice also engages the staff to provide care after their service hours as well as will also permit them in having the access on health information of patients for providing them excellent quality of care after the service hours (Nelson, Ramona and Nancy 2016).  

Security

Practice employees, Security Medical practitioners and contractors need to look after confidential health information in opposition to illicit access, alteration or revelation, mishandling as well as loss when it is kept or used for patient’s sustained supervision health care. Employees need to make sure that the patients, health care providers and visitors cannot have illegal access to the medical documentation storage or computer systems.

Grievance about confidentiality related cases needs to be taken care and resolved in the similar process like other type of complaints (Greenleaf 2015).

It is the very crucial procedure of the storing or retaining individual patients medical history till the patient becomes twenty five years old or at least for a minimum of seven years from the latest contact time, any one that is longer. Not a single record can be deleted at any time except the proper official authorization of the treating GP or of the official GP who is put into practice.

Employee training, Practice training and introduction measures for medical practitioners and employees need to make certain that medical practitioners as well as employees do express verbally that what is their understanding of such procedure. Through the continual instruction and guidance process it needs to be ensured that abilities and proficiency in the execution of such confidentiality policy and associated issues are always taken care of and well-run. 

If the details of the patient is been asked by the old friend of the patient and receptionist provides the details of the patients then the receptionist should be stopped from doing that as without verifying where the person is old friend of the patient the details should not be provided to him. Receptionist should be given training on this type of ethical issues and the norms of the hospital should be provided to them. If they fail in maintaining the norm they should be penalised for breaching the ethical issue.

The staff member should be immediately stopped from getting agitated and verbally abusing the young client from different culture. The management should be done by organising a diversified work culture theme within the organisation which is very much important within the organisation especially in the healthcare sector where individual of different culture comes. The staff should be warned first and then should be terminated from service if he is found guilty of the same issue in future.

This is the most unethical work in the healthcare organisation. All the staff members are been trained for keeping the medical problems of the clients in privacy. If the staff member are found doing this unethical work they should be accused on Zero Tolerance Policy of unethical behaviour and should be penalised according to that.  

Workplace Health & Safety	Laws that are being required by the organizations  and the managers for making sure for providing a safe work environment for staff and clients
Anti-Discrimination	It is important that for ensuring  that accessing for training and promoting  for the staff is fair and equitable. This is addressed through the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977.
Equal Employment Opportunity	Making sure that none is disadvantaged on a particular need.
State & Territory VET Acts	Funding for VET is controlled by federal laws. Awaring of the Policies and Frameworks affecting VET at the State/Territory level.
CRICOS (Overseas Students)	Providing courses to overseas students, they need to be registered through the Australian Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS).
Industrial Awards, Employer Contracts	Working conditions for the staffs, entitlements and remuneration is governed by laws at both federal and state/territory levels. Fair Work Australia is an excellent first port of call to find out more.
Environmental Standards	The activities should meet certain standards in the environmental situations, with the inclusion of the control of pollution emissions, and recycling.
Duty of Care	It is prior for the organizations for providing a safe and hazard free environment for staff and students.
Providing support to learners appropriate to their needs	Laws dealing in the learning of the students 1. Disability Discrimination Act 2. Sex Discrimination Act  3. Racial Discrimination Act  Making sure that for addressing these issues on  responding to the requirement of individuals.
Maintaining Privacy & Confidentiality	An important issue relating to the Privacy & Personal Information Act, that provides guidelines for collections, utilizations and sharing the personal details about the staffs and students engaged.
Code of Practice for Assessors	This is a voluntary Code of Practice for all assessors and gives guidelines for dealing with things like conflict of bribery and interest.

Legal advice is considered to be the advice that is considered to be an opinion that is considered to be formal based on any sort of substances or the process for the law that is in relation for a particular situation. It is considered to be a necessary for any particular organizations under any circumstances that may direct the customer or the patient to the court of justice or under the law against the particular healthcare organizations (Thomas 2014).

Every organization must have policies and procedures for the guidelines for the management in the ethical issues.

Issues that must be required for any organizations for following up can be listed as,

Anti discrimination, Safe Working Place, Keeping data confidential of the patients.

Records that organizations need to keep about the patients is their physical address so whenever required the organization can contact them.

Steps can be taken for ensuring the staff members are:

They can file case against any situation that are being faced by the employees while serving the services to the organizations.

The breaches that can be faced by the organizations can be from the employees working and serving with the company and meanwhile working with the other company as a freelancer by utilizing the main fundamentals of the organizations (Small et al. 2014).

Penalties, imprisonment, failure of the departments can lead to the consequences of non-compliances.

The organizations must terminate the employee/s if found during the breaches.

The staff members can approach to the higher authority for reporting the breach.

Organization can get accreditation by performing well to the patients.

Maintaining the knowledge for the requirements of the compliance for the organization by appointing any legal advisor or any officer.

Continuous improvements leads to the updating the policies and the procedures for the non-compliances and thus can help the organization in updating the compliance needs. 

Reference List

Bourgeois, Fabienne C., Daniel J. Nigrin, and Marvin B. Harper. “Preserving patient privacy and confidentiality in the era of personal health records.” Pediatrics 135, no. 5 (2015): e1125-e1127.

Greenleaf, Graham. “Hong Kong data privacy 2015: Cautious enforcement, strong principles.” (2015).

‘Handbook for the Management of Health Information in Private Medical Practice’

Nelson, Ramona, and Nancy Staggers. Health Informatics-E-Book: An Interprofessional Approach. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2016.

Small, Will, Lisa Maher, and Thomas Kerr. “Institutional ethical review and ethnographic research involving injection drug users: A case study.” Social science & medicine 104 (2014): 157-162.

Thomas, Paige A. “Online Legal Advice: Ethics in the Digital Age.” . Mary’s J. on Legal Malpractice & Ethics 4 (2014): 440.

Turvey, Carolyn, Dawn Klein, Gemmae Fix, Timothy P. Hogan, Susan Woods, Steven R. Simon, Mary Charlton et al. “Blue Button use by patients to access and share health record information using the Department of Veterans Affairs’ online patient portal.” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 21, no. 4 (2014): 657-663.

Ventola, C. Lee. “Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices.” Pharmacy and Therapeutics 39, no. 7 (2014): 491.

Weimer, David L., and Aidan R. Vining. Policy analysis: Concepts and practice. Taylor & Francis, 2017.