Question

Please answer the following question in your own words in 450 word count. Please cite 5 academic/professional references published in last 5 yrs.

You work for a health care organization that frequently needs to share information with other providers. Your organization has a very important relationship with a diagnostics center in particular where you frequently need to share patient information such as lab results, X-rays, and other diagnostic information. You have been asked to review your company's protocols on sharing and receiving patient information for outside providers to ensure that your organization is in compliance with the latest standards and regulations.

Write an executive summary that examines the compliance procedures and practice guidelines that these organizations would need to establish to achieve optimum operational effectiveness while complying with federal, state, and local laws governing patient information security and records retention.

Answer 1

Any health care organisation is responsible to keep the health information of its patients secure and private,because it is the right of an individual. There are different laws in different countries which govern the sharing of patient information to another source.These laws set rules about who can look at,receive and use health information. These also take various measures to protect confidentiality,integrity and security of the information.

Health care organisations in accordance with the Patient protection and Affordable care Act need to have an effective compliance program in place.To make it effective the compliance program should be more than a mere document.To ensure compliance with policies and procedures these steps can be taken

• involve leaders of each section of the organisation.This ensures that new policies are not misunderstood and it makes sense to the employee.
• make sure these these policies are delivered to employees in a proper media that they are comfortable with.
• make the policies and procedures easily accessible to employees by structuring the folders by department and name of policy.
• set up weekly meetings with managers to ensure that their employees have understood the compliance procedure.
• based on the fileld of work ,schedule practice sessions and make the employees take quizzes to ensure their understanding.

Some of the requirements of a health care compliance program include:

• developing and implementing compliance policies and procedures.
• internal monitoring and auditing.
• having a compliance officer or contact person
• training and educating staff on the new policies and procedures.
• developing open lines of communication
• taking proper corrective actions and disciplinary measures in case of any offenses.
• having a set of guidelines to be followed.

The guidelines are required to help health care providers in decision making process.When it involves the protection of patient information, thes guidelines need to be followed:

• put inplace safeguards to protect patient records
• responsibly share the information that is needed.
• have agreement with the other service provders that they will use the information responsibly and also safeguard the information appropriately.
• have procedures to limit access to the information and ensure proper teaching is given to all staff regarding the procedure.

By following the above said compliance procedures and guidelines patient information can be protect which will ensure the effective running of the health care organisations.

Reference:

Jenny Spiers;Information governance task force;document number POL_1016;June 2016.

Management of patient information:trends and challenges in member states;vol 6;world health organisation;2012

Anne V .Irving;Policies and procedures for health care organisations:A risk management perspective;October 2013