discussion response in 250-300 words

 One safeguard I use is making sure anything with patient information on it is either in the patient’s room, hidden from public view in an employee station, or disposed of properly. This ensures that the patient’s identity and information cannot be viewed by others. Another safeguard that I use in my professional practice is signing out of the EHR after use. This ensures that others cannot view or access patient information on my computer.   A safeguard utilized at my healthcare organization to ensure privacy is the use of protected health information (PHI). Protected health information is defined by HIPAA as health information that is considered to be individually identifiable (Kayaalp, 2018). Our hospital allows patients during admission to list people who can have PHI access. If a person on their PHI list calls, the patient’s health information can be given to them. Otherwise, the staff cannot give them any of the patient’s information. Another safeguard our hospital uses is the prohibition of camera use, including phone cameras, on any hospital property. This prevents the possibility of pictures or recordings of patient information for personal use. Likewise, e-mailing any patient information is also prohibited in the hospital.  A data breach can be defined as the “impermissible use or disclosure that compromises the security or privacy of the protected health information” (Bai, Jian & Flasher, 2017, para. 2). Data breaches can be caused by criminal attack, system glitch, or human error. One major ethical concern of a data breach is confidentiality. Patients have the right to privacy in the hospital; during a data breach, their privacy is violated when people have impermissible access to their information. The information obtained from a data breach can also be spread to others, further violating the patient’s confidentiality.   References: Bai, G., Jiang, J., & Flasher, R. (2017). Hospital Risk of Data Breaches. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(6), 878–880. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.0336   Kayaalp, M. (2018). Patient Privacy in the Era of Big Data. Balkan Medical Journal, 35(1), 8–17. doi: 10.4274/balkanmedj.2017.0966