Current incidents of medical record breaches are concrete proof that it is impossible to set up a perfect system of keeping this data safe. Thieves were able to steal the records of patients, staff members, contractors, and suppliers while under the custody of a record management company. Just last March 2011, nearly two million owners of personal information managed by a provider were informed that their records were missing. These are only examples of patients’ health records being compromised. These breaches against health records pose danger to the privacy of hundreds of millions of people.
To preserve their confidentiality, the patient’s medical records should be kept secure and private. These documents hold sensitive, personal information that tells much about the owner. Because of this, those who are found to commit breaches should be held liable. Just recently, a general hospital in the U.S. was fined $1 million for lapses in protecting personal information. Paper records of 192 employees of a company were left by a hospital employee on a subway train. How should these issues be handled?
One state spokesperson said that there is not enough care on the part of the health care industry. An examination was conducted by the HHS on the status of security measures at health care facilities across the U.S. Results showed that the system that houses the patient’s records is at risk. The investigations done at seven large hospitals in different states also revealed an alarming reality. Unencrypted personal data of patients was stored on computers that cannot guarantee access by authorized users only.
Some health care experts are not convinced that the enforcement of HIPAA alone can sufficiently address the problem of data breaches. A former national health coordinator of health information technology said that HIPAA is already outdated. The law is no longer applicable in the manner in which data passes through many hands.
Today, individual health care records pass through at least thirty people or organizations. To make HIPAA consistently effective, it must be updated to suit the present state of information technology. It would be if a new law would be passed - one that supports or strengthens the existing ones.
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