Security of EHR
The Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Protected Health Information (the Security Rule) establish a national set of standards for protecting certain health information that is held or transferred in electronic form. The Security Rule requires covered healthcare organizations to maintain reasonable and appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for protecting PHI.
Specifically, covered entities must:
· Ensure PHI confidentiality (not available or disclosed to unauthorized persons), integrity (not altered or destroyed in an unauthorized manner), and availability (accessible and usable on demand by an authorized person) of all PHI they create, receive, maintain or transmit.
· Identify and protect against reasonably anticipated threats to the security, integrity, and impermissible uses or disclosures of the information
Perhaps surprisingly, one of the most serious threats, especially to public figures comes from health care workers themselves.
Read the following article: EHR snooping – Best efforts to bust, punish and prevent it
Explore the problem of illegally accessing EHRs.
Include the following aspects in the assignment:
Ø Summarize the Security Rule that protects the PHI
Ø List five parts of the PHI that are protected
Ø Are politicians, celebrities, and their family members entitled to PHI privacy (there are laws that hold that those in the public eye are not entitled to the same privacy as others)? Explain your answer.
Ø What punishment you would deserve if you illegally accessed someone’s PHI
Ø When may a healthcare worker legally access a PHI?
Ø Cite any references used. This is a simple Q & A. As always, proper grammar, sentence structure, and spelling is required
