As Per Writer 29

Question Description

The situation. Healthcare providers need access topatient personal health information wherever patients are present forcare. Systems that standardize electronic medical records provide suchaccess, but the risk to privacy that accompanies that access is real,and breaches often make the news. At the Federal level, the HIPAAPrivacy Rule protects personal health information gathered by healthcareproviders, but most agree that information needs more protection thanHIPAA currently affords. Some believe added protection may be found inthe forming and keeping of codes of ethics.

A scenario.Mary works in a hospital health information management department, andMaureen, her friend, comes one day to pick up the medical records of apatient who is a client of the lawyer Maureen works for. Maureen,however, has forgotten to bring the client’s signed authorization form,though she assures Mary the form, which she saw the patient sign, is ather office. Since Maureen’s need for the form is urgent and there isn’tenough time to return with the form today, Maureen hopes to take therecords and return with the form another day.

Read the iHealthCoalition’s eHealth Code of Ethics, the Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule, and with the above scenario in mind, consider the following questions:

• In light of what the Code and HIPAA say, how might Mary and Maureen best resolve the problem?
• How might a code of ethics provide personal medical information more protection than HIPAA?
• In what ways, if any, does HIPAA protect personal medical information where codes of ethics do not?

To support your work, use your course and textbook readings and also use the South University Online Library. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format.