Name
Capella University
NURS-FPX 4040 Managing Health Information and Technology
Prof. Name
Date
PHI refers to any details about medical condition, the delivery of healthcare, or payment related information that can be connected to a patient. It includes lab results, insurance information, and other data that could identify a patient (Tariq & Hackert, 2022). This paper is an update for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) staff on HIPAA guidelines and the safe use of social media to safeguard patient information on electronic devices.
HIPAA is a set of rules in the U.S. that helps keep medical information of patients private and secure. It makes sure that healthcare personnel and insurance companies handle your health information safely and share it with authorized entities only when they are supposed to. Under the HIPAA, PHI is safeguarded to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality. HIPAA mandates strict guidelines on storing, accessing, and sharing PHI to protect individuals’ health information from unauthorized disclosure (Tariq & Hackert, 2022).
● Privacy: Under HIPAA, privacy is a patient’s right to keep personal medical information from being shared without permission. For instance, a patient’s medical diagnosis should not be shared with people not involved in their care.
● Security: Security is the measure to keep PHI from breaches such as unauthorized access, theft, or damage. For instance, using passwords for electronic health records in ICU and encrypting data to protect against cyber-attacks that can cause psychological or physical harm to critical patients.
● Confidentiality: Confidentiality assures patients that health information will be kept secret and only disclosed to authorized entities. For instance, a healthcare provider discusses a patient’s condition privately without any unauthorized entity (Tariq & Hackert, 2022).
Safeguarding sensitive electronic health information in an ICU requires effective interdisciplinary collaboration. This teamwork ensures comprehensive patient data protection, enhancing privacy and confidentiality. Breach of PHI can lead to severe consequences such as license cancellation, termination, monetary fines, and imprisonment (Kerr et al., 2020).
All staff members can use secure, password-protected systems to access EHRs. This includes logging out after each session to prevent breaches. Following communication protocols, the team can share PHI only through secure channels, which includes avoiding public discussions about patients, prohibited login credential sharing with anyone, and refraining from using personal devices like mobile phones and tablets within the ICU or during shift hours (Kerr et al., 2020).
In 2016, a nursing assistant was terminated from their job and sent to jail for 30 days because of posting a video on social media of the patient under HIPAA law (The HIPAAJournal, 2022).
• Social media such as Instagram, TikTok or Facebook must be utilized for educational and informational purposes, such as preventive measures, service updates or visiting hours within ICU (The HIPAA Journal, 2022).
• Report any suspected breach immediately to the designated authorities and take necessary action to contain the breach by removing post or deleting comment from social accounts (Dong et al., 2021).
• Do not comment or share responses on any patient or public profiles, as it can lead to reputational damage and psychological harm to ICU patients (Dong et al., 2021).
• Avoid sharing any ICU patient-related information (text, image, videos) or discussing specific cases on social media platforms (The HIPAA Journal, 2022).
Under HIPPA, employees are fined under four tiers based on severity, but it ranges from $127-$63,973 per violation (Hennessy et al., 2023). The evidence-based strategies are needed to avoid any legal or civil implications against Interprofessional team of healthcare. Evidence-based strategies can mitigate the violation risks in the ICU setting on three levels.
• Firstly, staff must ensure physical access control to PHI, using cameras, secure workstations to hide screen visibility, and device management like laptops and tablets (Lucca et al., 2020)
• Secondly, technical-level strategies encourage healthcare personnel to use EHRs with encryption, practice Role-Based Access control, and regular audits to find any suspicious activity (Gupta et al., 2023).
• Lastly, administrative strategies can mitigate risks through comprehensive training, education, developing clear policies and procedures, and incident report plans through immediate reporting, containment, and notification (Clarke & Martin, 2023). Training ICU staff about patients’ health information protection using EHRs and social media would allow them make conscious decisions.
Clarke, M., & Martin, K. (2023). Managing cybersecurity risk in healthcare settings. Healthcare Management Forum, 37(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/08404704231195804
Dong, S. W., Nolan, N. S., Chavez, M. A., Li, Y., Escota, G. V., & Stead, W. (2021). Get privacy trending: Best practices for the social media Educator. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofab084
Gupta, D., Mazumdar, N., Nag, A., & Singh, J. P. (2023). Secure data authentication and access control protocol for industrial healthcare system. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 14(5), 4853–4864. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-022-04370-2
Hennessy, M., Story, J., & Enko, P. (2023). Lessons learned: Avoid risks when using social media. Missouri Medicine, 120(5), 345–348.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10569390/
Kerr, H., Booth, R., & Jackson, K. (2020). Exploring the characteristics and behaviors of nurses who have attained microcelebrity status on Instagram: Content analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(5), e16540. https://doi.org/10.2196/16540
Lucca, A. V., Silva, L. A., Luchtenberg, R., Garcez, L., Mao, X., García Ovejero, R., Miguel Pires, I., Luis Victória Barbosa, J., & Reis Quietinho Leithardt, V. (2020). A case study on the development of a data privacy management solution based on patient information. Senso, 20(21), E6030. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20216030
Tariq, R. A., & Hackert, P. B. (2022). Patient confidentiality. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519540/#:~:text=HIPAA%20broadly%20defines%20PHI%20as
The HIPAA Journal. (2022, April 12). HIPAA social media rules. HIPAA Journal. https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-social-media/
