Privacy Rule Violation
Laws and policies violated
Violation, according to HIPAA, is an impermissible use or the disclosure under the rule of privacy that consists of the privacy or security of the protected health information. The Privacy Rule is against the sharing of photographs or any other form of information about the patient on social media without written patient consent (Kulkarni, 2018). Another common social media violation of privacy rule is [posting verbal gossip on social media about a particular patient, or posting the information to another unauthorized person even when the name of the patient is not disclosed when the gossip is taking place. Besides, the mistake of believing that a particular post about a patient has been deleted or is kept private while it is still visible to the public is another social media HIPAA violations.
Prevention
One of the most effective measures to avoid consequences and the effect of social media HIPAA violations is for the organizations dealing with health to have clear and widely distributed policies of the organization concerning the social media networking during non-working and working hours. It is essential to also the health care providers on the importance of maintaining patient privacy and confidentiality (Martin et al., 2018). The health organization should have HIPAA security training every month to keep the health providers posted on the issues concerning policies and rules on patient privacy and confidentiality concerning social media.
Consequences
The consequences related to the social media posting is the HIPAA violation penalties, which is applied to employees who mishandle PHI. The penalties include Civil Money Penalties that can lead to the victim being fined money, amounting between $100-$1,500,000. In other cases, it can lead to Criminal Penalties that can lead to imprisonment for up to ten years or fines up to $250,000 (Baeth & Aktas, 2018). Other consequences include employee termination, loss of medical license, and lawsuits.