Question

Discuss the major types of health care information

Analyze four issues associated with poor quality health care data.

Examine the challenges associated with measuring data quality.

Discuss the laws and regulations that govern the release of patient information.

Patient consent required to release information

Outline the process for handling substance abuse medical record data.

Discuss how the releasing organization/provider authenticates a healthcare provider requesting the information.

Discuss how data exchange is secured.

Answer 1

Discuss the major types of health care information

The following are the types of health care information along with the type of the systems to tackle that:

• Operational & tactical systems for easy classification of information.
• Clinical & administrative systems for managing patient details on an administrative level.
• Subject & task based systems such as Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) or Electronic Health Records (EHRs).
• Financial systems for tracking revenue & managing billing submissions.

There are some common data quality issues:

• Duplicate data
• Data where some forms are missing (incomplete)
• Data that is simply wrong due to user error (like mistyping a name)
• Data that is technically correct but not useful due to conversion issues from an older platform with different data processing rules

Examine the challenges associated with measuring data quality

When enterprises use & process big data, extracting high-quality and real data from the massive, variable, and complicated data sets it becomes an urgent issue.

There are following challenges associated with measuring data quality:

• Data volume is tremendous, and it is difficult to judge data quality within a reasonable amount of time

• Data change very fast and the “timeliness” of data is very short, which necessitates higher requirements for processing technology.

Health Information Privacy Law and Policy

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule (Privacy Rule), is a federal privacy law that sets a baseline of protection for certain individually identifiable health information (“health information”).

There are some federal and state privacy laws, which require health care providers to obtain patients’ written consent before they disclose their health information to other people and organizations.

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Patient Records Privacy Law

There is Confidentiality of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Patient Records (CFR Title 42: Part 2) regulation specifies restrictions related to the disclosure and use of patient records that include information on substance use diagnoses or services.

Furthermore more specifically there is a Substance Abuse Confidentiality Regulations to instruct practitioners in complying with the federal law. With an emphasis on electronic health records and health information

All the information exchange should be with proper consent of patient and as per regulations.

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a patient care information resource for clinicians and nursing documentation is an essential part of comprehensive patient care.

Ensuring privacy and the security of health information is a key component to building the trust required to realize the potential benefits of electronic health information exchange.

Security in EHR can be seriously threatened by hackers, viruses and worms.

No information sharing should be allowed without the proper consent of patient.