Members of the public have most likely heard of the acronym HIPAA in reference to the medical field. However, not everyone knows what it means. HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This act was passed by Congress in 1966 and was created in order to reduce healthcare fraud, make transfer of health insurance easier when individuals change jobs, and protect patient information. The HIPAA Privacy Rule is what we will be focusing on specifically. This rule was created in order to protect individual’s identifiable health records. Health records belong solely to the patient and the providers of their healthcare. These records must be kept confidential because they may contain sensitive information in regards to individual’s health history. Individual’s may make this records public, however, that is done at their personal discretion.
Within the last decade, the medical community has taken a major turn towards technology. Health records, test results, and patient history are just a few of the things that can be accessed online. There are many benefits of this technological reform, such as increased accessibility of information by both patient and doctor, as well as increased patient history communication between hospitals. Allowing patient’s to access their records and test results at home can save trips to the office and copay fees. Articles such as this argue that traditional paper records can lead to major gaps in patient health information. It goes on to say that a complete reform from paper to online medical records would be the most convenient method for patients to access their info. In this lawsuit filed against Aultman Hospital (located in Canton, Ohio), a patient passed away due to an nonavailability of specific health records of said patient. These records were paper-based and were inaccessible because hospital staff failed to print them out. The gap between paper documents and electronic records was apparent in this argument. Based on this information, electronic medical records seem like an easy solution to the problem of hard to access information, right?
However, this may not always be the case. There are a few drawbacks of the technological reform that may have been unforeseen. A single error in the upload of information could result in a catastrophic leak of patient medical history, such as in this recent accident. In this specific incident, 1.5 million patient records were released to the general public. Organizations such as the National Health Service have apps that allow medical information to be accessible on mobile devices. Apps such as these are notorious for poor privacy and security policies. These apps are at increased risk to provide information to third parties. In a 2013 research study, it was found that out of the 79 apps on the National Health Service, 70 were found to send information to online parties. Leaks of information such as these, most definitely result in the violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, and can result in lawsuits against major hospitals and technology companies.
Overall, companies and hospitals must be increasingly careful when putting patient medical information on online databases. Although it can increase accessibility and communication for those in need, it can also put hospitals at major risk for lawsuits based on the violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.