Discussion on Medical records
Medical records are sensitive. The data contained in the documents are private, confidential, and its leakage or unauthorized access places the victims in a vulnerable position. The health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 provides strict directions on data privacy protection. Simone et al. review the instances of when the access of medical records becomes a HIPAA breach. They note that HIPAA provides patient health information with federal protection and presents individuals with a variety of rights regarding the handling of this information. HIPAA regulations exist that instruct parties and entities on the required safeguards required in such cases. Simone et al. describe the occurrence of a HIPAA breach as costly and risky. The reason for this is the steep penalties that the responsible stakeholders risk. These range from hefty fines, prison sentences, to exposure to litigation (De Simone, 2019).
Simone et al. observe that there are some limitations to patient health data access that define a HIPAA breach. They indicate that covered entities, such a healthcare provider, only have permission to disclose patient information to the patient. The access to this information should only be done in facilitating healthcare operations, treatment, and matters of payment. Therefore, any other party that accesses this information breaches the HIPAA regulations (De Simone, 2019). Breach reporting is a systematic and critical aspect of the process upon discovery of possible or existing breaches.
Cases on non-compliance to HIPAA have been recorded with some severe breaches occurring in the past. For example, a physician group in Florida, Aegis Medical Group, suffered a breach that involved 9,800 patients concerning their protected health information by a former employee. It is alleged that this individual tried to sell this data to third parties – which was inclined towards fraud and identity theft (CalHIPAA, 2020).
In conclusion, to thwart this breach, Aegis Medical Group must have ensured that employee awareness and physical records control access was robustly implemented – as a significant part of the files accessed were physical records. The oversight in this was the sole facilitator of this breach. The consequences to the individual were the loss of employment for the perpetrator. Also, employees were informed of the repercussions of similar violations – Aegis Medical Group further implemented better compliance methods such as digitalizing their recording.