Medical history can be stored digitally. Several regulations protect medical records. Information is crucial for doctors to make quick diagnoses.
Medical records are kept safe by healthcare facilities. With the use of technology, medical facilities can keep records secure.
Here are some ways to protect your patients’ medical information.
Safeguarding Sensitive Medical Information in Electronic Form
Electronic medical records include photos, test data, notes, prescriptions, and allergies. Doctors must “do no damage” to protect information, privacy, and confidentiality. Protected health information (PHI) security describes how doctors must safeguard patients’ medical records.
Confidentiality of Medical Records
Concern for patients’ privacy restricts disclosure to licensed healthcare providers. Before using patient information, researchers must receive approval from their institution’s ethics committee. Your information could be de-identified before being used for research.
Safety and Confidentiality of Patient Information
Patients’ treatment and rights may be compromised if their electronic medical records are not secure. Physicians’ professional and legal responsibilities may also be impacted. It’s important that doctors are provided with lots of information about patients so that they can make the most appropriate choices. Lack of access hinders important decisions and negatively impacts medical care.
Methods for Increasing the Safety of Patients’ Medical Records
Do Risk Assessments Regularly
You’d be surprised how long people let systems run without assessing the risk. While individuals acclimate to major technological, geography changes or other factors, security gaps may go unchecked. Certain HIPAA laws require risk assessments.
Make Sure Information Is Secure
Any business might benefit from this data security advice, and healthcare professionals are no exception. Using encryption on everything from mail to patient information and back-end systems can prevent hackers from accessing data and causing breaches. It would help if you took every precaution to safeguard data in this day and age.
Analyze System Activity
It’s possible to do this without making any changes to the system’s software or hardware by instituting new departmental regulations. Allowing everyone to use the system is dangerous. Back-end security is improved by monitoring system access, decreasing risk.
Authorization with Two Factors for the Patient Portal
Patient portals allow patients remote access to their healthcare information from various providers. While patient portals are a great way to keep tabs on medical and insurance records, they might potentially leave that data vulnerable to hackers. Ensure that all patient portal accounts are protected by two-factor authentication to mitigate this danger.
HIPAA compliant texting is also an excellent and safe option to communicate medical information to your patients.
Formulate a Strategy to Protect Personally Identifiable Information Better
The security risk assessment findings are ready to be used to improve patient privacy measures.
This plan should contain the assessors’ suggestions and a detailed implementation strategy. This may or may not include risk analysis findings.
Recommendations for the Security Risk Assessment
- Any IT service requests that must be fulfilled.
- The new applications and hardware required are detailed.
- The currently installed software and hardware will need an update or replacement.
- Involved outside parties must be contacted to execute your strategy.
- Include a description of the training that all employees must undergo.
- Specification of the expenses at each stage.
- Complete phase-by-phase timing analysis.
- Patient data protection and fostering a more compliant culture in the workplace.
Conclusion
Use the above tips to safeguard patient data and medical information at your medical practice.
