Answer 3 for DNP 805 Select a specific health care technology-related regulation, law, statute, or ethical standard that applies to informatics
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was enacted as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment ACT of 2009 to help stimulate the nation’s economy. The goal of the enactment was to reduce cost, decrease health disparities, and, most importantly, improve the quality of care (Alexander et al., 2019). With this, increasing the availability of medical records was related to the purpose of the law. Electronic health records (EHR) increased the capability to provide care as it was easily accessible and provided a detailed health history (Enriquez, 2020). Because Healthcare providers can easily access EHRs, it helps avoid duplication of tests and treatments and promotes care coordination among different providers and practices (Alexander et al., 2019). With this, enabling access to medical records requires additional national security to provide the privacy of individuals. Organizations must abide by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) which regulates and protects sensitive patient information from being released without the patient’s consent (Enriquez, 2020).
The EHR has been groundbreaking in the medical field because it has created an openness among healthcare providers regarding patient history, previous treatments, and other pertinent medical records. The issue with delicate information being easily accessible is that protecting the information from those who may abuse it is needed (Patel, 2019). In addition to the EHR, nursing informatics plays an imperative role in protecting and encrypting information. According to Patel (2019), encryption of protected health information (PHI) uses many algorithms to change regular text into encoded text. Doing so protects unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information. From a Christian perspective, as a healthcare professional, doing good unto others extends to protecting the patient and their information from others. We are trusted with the patient’s life and personal information. Healthcare providers see their health records and personal records such as insurance information, social security, and other sensitive information on a face sheet.
References:
Alexander, S., Frith, K., & Hoy, H. (2019). Applied clinical informatics for nurses (2nd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Enriquez, L. (2020). Data-rich and knowledge-poor: How privacy law privatized medical data and what to do about It. Columbia
Law Review, 120(8), 2319–2357.
Patel, N. (2019). Your personal health information may have been compromised: Using encryption to prevent data breaches on end-user devices. Hofstra Law Review, 48(2), 563–595.
