Privacy Ethics in Healthcare

Summary

Privacy has been an issue in the health care and the invent of technology has caused data has become easily accessible to concern people. The loopholes in technology and lack of ethical practices can compromise the sensitive information of patients available with the medical practioners. The privacy has been a major concern of patients (Harris, pp. 25). We have reviewed the article written by Varick D. Love, Privacy Ethics in Healthcare, published in Journal of Health Care Compliance - July - August 2011 (see Appendix). In this article Love, studies that the Patients trust physicians with the mainly personal details of their private lives in anticipation of the physician remedy their sickness. The article argues the morals of privacy of patient among sick persons and their doctors and numerous ethical problems that health care officials face on a daily basis in dealing with protected health information (PHI). The relationship between a patient and his or her physician has constantly focused on a tacit belief that a right of patient to privacy will constantly be valued and maintained. Data stored electronically also give doctors the capability to discuss the data with contemporaries and share the patient details with insurance organizations which must be regarded as personal. Acquiring access to sick person's PHI for researching or other evaluation and trend estimation purposes, for the rationale of recuperating people is maintained by the reality that records of medical are linked with coverage of health care by other health care services funded by the community or by insurance companies. The author has recommended that the responsibility of the data protection should be held collectively by the people who have access to it and it must be ensured that the higher management of these institutions must take stringent measures to ensure the same (Love, pp. 23). It is also recommended that a compliance officer may be appointed at each institution whose responsibility will be to ensure that the organization maintains the privacy of patients.

Analysis and Predictions

It is observed in the paper that the ease of availability of patient's information by the hospital staff has been overlooked. The information sharing via electronic means has numerous advantages as it leads to the effective communication of medical information. Some companies do employ paper less systems and other monitoring systems to monitor the data vulnerable to theft. Maintaining the privacy of healthcare information of patients is a matter of concern for the healthcare authorities. It is very important to protect the medical information of individuals because some of the most important decisions of an individual's life could be influenced by these medical records of the individual. Implementing computerized healthcare information systems is a way of protecting medical information of patients. The suggestions made by the author are very valuable since the organizations can very much benefit the organizations in maintaining the data privacy loopholes, provides training and review the exposure of patient information in the organization. Concrete efforts to secure the patient information can benefit ...