Jennifer walks behind Sloan\'s desk and notices that she is looking at the progr

Question

Jennifer walks behind Sloan's desk and notices that she is looking at the progress notes on a patient who was recently arrested and indicted for child abuse. The case has been in the newspaper and on television consistently for several weeks. Jennifer asks Sloan why she has accessed that record. Sloan hesitates and then says she must have entered the wrong patient ID number. Does Sloan's explanation sound convincing? Why is Jennifer concerned about Sloan looking at the patient's record? Just because the individual is a patient at the clinic, does that mean any employee has the right to look at the patient's EMR?

Write a one-page, double-spaced paper answering the questions: Does Sloan’s explanation sound convincing? Why is Jennifer concerned about Sloan looking at a patient’s records? How would you deal with this as opposed to Jennifer, or would you do the same thing? Is any employee allowed to look at any chart, are you able to look at your own chart? What does Jennifer have to do now that she has caught Sloan reading the patient’s chart, what is her responsibilities now?

Explanation / Answer

Sloan's explanation doesn't justify why she has browsing through the record and not just had accessed the records. So, Jennifer shouldn't be convinced by her explanation. But she should also understand the facts that she cannot vindicated Sloan in front of third person as she would not have any proof refuting the reason given by Sloan. The reason would absolutely convince any third person introduced later in this situation.

Jennifer was right in being concerned with the Sloan's activity as this was direct violation of HIPAA guidelines and there was a high possibility of a wrongdoing using this record in future. It might also happen that Sloan might share the data with people from Media fraternity and thus would help create greater hype in the concerned case. Moreover, any security audit conducted on the system would also negatively affect the data security standard required for HIPAA certification.

As already discussed, any third person would be absolutely convinced with Sloan and would have bought her reasoning. If I would have been the third person, I would have also bought the reason as such mistakes are absolutely possible.

As per the HIPAA guidelines, we should have a very restricted access to the EMR data but it doesn't say anything about if a healthcare professional can or cannot access data of his past transactions/patients. So there is a gray area with respect to this guideline and hence, we can access such data.

Jennifer firstly should suggest Sloan to not repeat her action again in subtle manner. In addition to this, she should also send in recommendation to the Data Team, to implement added restrictions limiting such access in future. Moreover, she should also request the management to conduct an internal inquiry to analyze the extent to which HIPAA guidelines are being followed or is not being followed.

Please Like & Provide your reviews in comments. :-)

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse J
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.