Question

Technology and the Future Trends of Long Term Care

Please write a one page reaction paper on issues dealing with privacy and access to information.

Answer 1

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) established several privacy rules and regulations for healthcare professionals about the patient confidentially and transferring their information through electronic communications. Branching the rules of patient confidentiality results in immediate termination of the employee.

The healthcare professionals should never discuss the patient’s health condition, tests, and financial information with the other staff members or with those that are not directly associated with the patient care. So, if the staff members are discussing another patient, it must not be ignored, should not distract the nurses or inform the family members, but it should be immediately reported to the supervisor.

According to HIPAA, not only the information refused by the patient to discuss to the doctors, and test results, and insurance coverage, but all the information related to the patient, which allows the identification of the patient (including the personal information) must be protected and is considered as a private information of the patient.