The increasing needs of the health care consumers have paved the introduction of the information technology in the health care for improving the patient outcome, lowering the cost, bringing transparency in the billing system. But the use of internet and the information are impacting on the privacy of the patients leading to breach of the medical legislation (Williams, 2010, May). Apart from the electronic medical records, the use of smartphones and too much socialisation in Instagram, Facebook and Myspace are exposing the personal life of the patients in social media.
This report aims to focus on the healthcare ethics and legislations related to patient privacy, through the lens of the HIPAA rules and regulations. The report will also draw an ending to a scenario with possible recommendations. The paper would also discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of using smartphones and social media in health care.
The HIPAA rules restricts the use of the patient health information in the social media, which includes any texts or photographs of a specific patients that could result in the patient being identified. The information can only be included in the social media only after obtaining the consent of the patient (Williams, 2010, May). Social media channels should only be used for suggesting general people with health tips, new medical researches, provided that no patient information has been disclosed in social media (Denecke et al., 2015). HIPAA violation in the social media results in disciplinary actions against the employees causing cancellation of the registration as a health care professional, often causing monetary penalty (Tech advisory., 2016). The HIPAA social media guidelines involves development of the clear policies and ensuring that all the health care professionals are aware of the HIPAA rules. The possible penalties for the violation of the HIPAA rules should be disseminated to staff members. Policies should be reviewed that requires that all the social media posts has to be approved by the legal department before the posting (Tech advisory. 2016). It is necessary to monitor the social media accounts of the health organisations such that any potential HIPAA violation can be flagged. The HITECH act defines breaching as the authorised acquisition, use, access or disclosure of the protected health information (Rung, Warnke & Mattheos, 2014). The HITECH rules are set forth stronger privacy rules by the use of mandatory breach notification requirements, civil penalty structure.
For this scenario, I have chosen the fourth option, which states that on the following day a big investigation might take place at the workplace due to the HIPAA violation that involving the celebrity who had been admitted to the hospital. One of the matter of concern that has happened is that the phone was nowhere to be found. It is clearly evident that a malpractice has been involved and any of the hospital staff member has got access to the phone and has delivered the pictures to the Gossip Gazette. In such a situation I might come under the lawsuit directly even if I had not sold those pictures as I have no evidence of proving my concern.
I might be a big fan of the singer, but as a nurse I should abide by the ethical principles and should have been aware of the HIPAA rules. In spite of being challenged by the friend, I would not have clicked those pictures or have sent them to my friend. According to the HIPAA rules, exchange of any kind of patient information online without the patient’s consent can put the health care professional under medical lawsuit (Melnik, 2013). In extreme cases I should have notified about the incident to my own organisation in order to avoid any medical litigation. Had the cell phone been found, hopefully this could have prevented the occurrence of such a breach.
The social media, web and the mobile technologies are used in health care and they often directly support the patient centred care. Peer to peer health care is emerging as a source of the patient information. The family members, patients and the friends share or disseminate their personal health information via social media sites (Hao & Gao, 2017). They also seek guidance via the social networking sites. The social networking communities and the different data sharing platforms support the sharing of experiences, symptoms and the treatment outcomes, which can be helpful for many individuals. Another application in this context is the recruitment of the patient for the clinical trials on the basis of their social media profiles. Furthermore, the physicians might use the social networking site for crowdsourcing the answers to the individual clinical questions (Hao & Gao, 2017).
One of the greatest disadvantages of using the social media is the violation of the privacy and confidentiality (Karasz, Eiden & Bogan, 2013). Another negative effect of using the social media on the health care practice is the interruptions and the distractions caused during the work timing (Ventola, 2014). There are many evidences that demonstrates that how smartphones and social media are used to collect and aggregate the data used for supplementing and transforming the traditional methods of healthcare (Free et al., 2015).
Some of the essential principles of social networking in health care is that, the health care professionals should refrain themselves from transmitting patient information through the social networking site. Clinicians interacting with the patients on the social media should observe the ethically prescribed nurse-patient professional boundaries (Ventola, 2014). As patient’s advocate, the nurses are accountable to take appropriate action on questionable health care delivery at the system level or individual level (Hao & Gao, 2017). Nurses viewing social media content posted by any colleague violating the legal or the ethical standards should bring the questionable posts under the attention of the colleague for avoiding legal litigation.
Conclusion and reflection
In conclusion, it can be said that although social media and smartphones are the powerful internet based tools allowing the users to create, share and discuss health contents like opinions, personal experiences, video clips and the images. It can cause a direct breaching of the confidentiality and the privacy of the patient as can be seen from this given scenario, where the images of the singer reaches a media house mistakenly causing breaching of the HIPAA rules. However as a nurse, I have learnt that nurses should be aware of their organisation policies and their responsibility to protect the privacy of the patient. Even if a nurse had to take the patient information on his/her smartphone, the images should be disposed as soon as the purpose is over (Karasz, Eiden & Bogan, 2013). Being a nurse, I should always maintain the patient- nurse professional boundaries. I have also learnt that if a nurse finds any obligatory posts then, the matter should be brought under the notice of the supervisor for the follow up. As a nurse I should participate in the development of the policies and the procedures for handling the online reports that can give rise to legal concerns.
References
Denecke, K., Bamidis, P., Bond, C., Gabarron, E., Househ, M., Lau, A. Y., Mayer, M. A., Merolli, M., … Hansen, M. (2015). Ethical Issues of Social Media Usage in Healthcare. Yearbook of medical informatics, 10(1), 137-47.
Free, C., Phillips, G., Watson, L., Galli, L., Felix, L., Edwards, P., … & Haines, A. (2013). The effectiveness of mobile-health technologies to improve health care service delivery processes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS medicine, 10(1), e1001363. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001363
Hao, J., & Gao, B. (2017). Advantages and Disadvantages for Nurses of Using Social Media. of, 3, 2. Access date: 14.11.2018. Retrieved from:https://www.scientonline.org/
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. doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300999
Melnik, T. (2013). Avoiding violations of patient privacy with social media. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 3(4), 39-46. doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256(15)30185-X
Rung, A., Warnke, F., & Mattheos, N. (2014). Investigating the use of smartphones for learning purposes by Australian dental students. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2(2). doi: [10.2196/mhealth.3120]
Tech advisory., (2016).Social Media and HIPAA Compliance. Access date: 14.11.2018. Retrieved from:https://www.techadvisory.org/2018/05/social-media-and-hipaa-compliance/
Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103576/
Williams, J. (2010, May). Social networking applications in health care: threats to the privacy and security of health information. In Proceedings of the 2010 ICSE workshop on software engineering in health care (pp. 39-49). ACM. doi>10.1145/1809085.1809091
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