M9 Information Technology Ethics Paper
Identify an ethical issue related to information technology within your profession (preferably related to health care) and describe the following:
Is there a policy or procedure within your organization to address the ethical issue you identified?
How would a breach related to this issue impact your organization?
How could you mediate the issue from rising to the level of becoming an ethical concern or problem?
Use a minimum of 4 peer-reviewed or scholarly sources to support your answers.
This paper should be 2-3 pages and follow current APA guidelines.———–please use an ethical issue related to social work profession
ANSWER
M9 Information Technology Ethics Paper
Introduction
Healthcare information technology has been integrated into primary care to help manage information about people’s health and healthcare data for a group of patients. Health Information technology has offered healthcare providers complete and accurate information about patient’s health, which helps provide the best possible care. However, there are ethical issues linked to healthcare information. Personal privacy is one of the major ethical issues linked to maintaining the integrity and privacy of data. According to Shen et al., (2018), personal privacy issues result from inappropriate and accidental disclosure of personal information to individuals that violate the privacy of individuals.
Personal Privacy
Health information technology has greatly threatened the privacy and security of patients’ information. Healthcare providers share and disclose patients’ information without their consent, thus violating personal privacy. Privacy issues in health information technology have fallen under concerns of improper release of information and systematic flow of information. Inappropriate releases that violate personal privacy in health information technology can result from unintentionally or intentionally access and dissemination through breaking into the electronic health records. One of the major ways healthcare providers violate personal privacy is by accessing personal health information and releasing it to outsiders for profit, revenge or spite.
Information Security Policy
Within the organization, there is an information security policy formulated from the HIPAA Security rules to implement patient health information safeguards. The information security policy has offered guidelines on appropriate access and use of patient information (Mehraeen, Ayatollahi and Ahmadi, 2016). The security policy has covered the compliance requirements, security procedures, controls and procedures. The information security policy have also covered the collection, usage and disclosure limitations. For instance, the policy has set appropriate limits on the amount and type of information collected, utilized and disclosed for specific purposes. The organization has detected patient data misuse and compromised networks through the information security policy and created effective documentation around user access control and security measures to safeguard the personal privacy in healthcare information.
Breach
Data breaches significantly affect the healthcare organization either directly or indirectly. Breaches to health information greatly impact the patients due to the embarrassment of personal information exposure, making them mistrust the healthcare organization and withhold their personal information (Liu, Musen and Chou, 2015). The negative impacts of breaches manifest in losses to consumer confidence, trust and loyalty. Healthcare organizations are likely to encounter financial losses due to potential fines resulting from breached health records and violations of HIPAA regulations.
Mediation
According to HIPAA rules, discretely identifiable health records should be protected with realistic technical, administrative and physical safety measures to ensure their integrity, confidentiality and obtainability and prevent inappropriate access by unauthorized persons (Abouelmehdi, Beni-Hessane and Khaloufi, 2018). One of the most effective ways to mitigate healthcare data breaches is to have procedures and policies that govern the use of health information. The procedures and policies are effective since they set expectations and standards for the workforce that improve their expertise in determining the impermissible and permissible health information. Running information security audits and analyses also plays a great role in preventing data breaches. It identifies the data gaps and exposes issues with controls in the current information security systems. This allows the healthcare organization to address the security breaches before the intruders take advantage of the weakness in the health information system. The healthcare organization also needs to educate the healthcare workforce on healthcare data breaches to create awareness on how to protect healthcare information.
Conclusion
In summation, personal privacy has been a major ethical issue in health information technology. Violation of personal privacy has its own consequences for the healthcare organization, especially due to consumer trust and potential fines that result from data breach incidents. The HIPAA security rules have played a major role in helping secure health information. Healthcare organizations have focused on the establishment of policies and procedures that govern the collection, use and dissemination of health information to prevent violation of personal privacy in health information technology. Educating employees and conducting security audits will also help mediate violation of personal privacy in health information.
References
Abouelmehdi, K., Beni-Hessane, A., & Khaloufi, H. (2018). Big healthcare data: preserving security and privacy. Journal of big data, 5(1), 1-18.
Liu, V., Musen, M. A., & Chou, T. (2015). Data breaches of protected health information in the United States. Jama, 313(14), 1471-1473.
Mehraeen, E., Ayatollahi, H., & Ahmadi, M. (2016). Health information security in hospitals: the application of security safeguards. Acta informatica medica, 24(1), 47.
Shen, N., Bernier, T., Sequeira, L., Strauss, J., Silver, M. P., Carter-Langford, A., & Wiljer, D. (2019). Understanding the patient privacy perspective on health information exchange: A systematic review. International journal of medical informatics, 125, 1-12.
