Ethical And Legal Implications Discussion Paper
Discussion Question
In the 1960s and 70s, when educational healthcare facilities and the federal government introduced programs to record and share patient data, the idea of Electronic Health Records (EHR) was established. The Institute of Medicine released a review in 1999 which indicated that by promoting the transmission of critical patient records, health information technology would greatly minimize clinical mistakes (Balestra, 2017). Although EHRs minimize the risk of clinical mistakes, there are certain issues and problems that challenge both the ethics of a nurse and legal concerns.
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Certain legal and ethical issues involved in the use of EHR that explicitly influence nurse practitioners, including the urge to reuse prior charting information by merely copy-pasting, delayed submissions and modifications to already validated records, and lack of appropriate documentation. With the enactment of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), some patient data has been secured and comes underneath the HIPAA scope of Protected Health Information (PHI). With traditional healthcare documentation, an infringement of the anonymity of patient information can happen, however, the risk of an infringement happening is significantly higher with EHR and EMR systems. as such, in order to avoid unwanted access to medical records, nurse practitioners ought to be vigilant, particularly potential risks created by ineffective authentication security, dissatisfied coworkers, physical security interventions, and existential risks like theft of information. More and more, nurse practitioners understand that IT is fundamentally necessary to enhancing the consistency of care and are thus focused on engaging these systems instead of working them Ethical And Legal Implications Discussion Paper.
References
Balestra, M. L. (2017). Electronic health records: patient care and ethical and legal implications for nurse practitioners. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 13(2), 105-111 Ethical And Legal Implications Discussion Paper
Review HIPAA, protected health information (PHI), and requirements for privacy and confidentiality in EHRs. Discuss one ethical and one legal issue related to the use of EHRs that directly impact advanced registered nursing practice. Discuss possible consequences for compromising patient data and measures you can implement in your own practice to protect patient privacy and confidentiality.