Protected Health Information (PHI): Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices
| Social media is a daily part of nurses’ lives. Nurses need it for information, socialization, and entertainment. However, they must adhere to social networking principles, hence the need to understand social media usage guidelines and what entails protected health information. | |
| Social Media Best Practices | · Adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidelines: nurses are guided by many ethical, legal, and professional principles. They should operate within the same parameters on social media.
· Cultivate community: use social media to connect with colleagues, research, and seek professional support (Reinbeck & Antonacci, 2019).  Struggling to meet your deadline ?Get assistance on Protected Health Information (PHI): Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices done on time by medical experts. Don’t wait – ORDER NOW! · Separate personal and professional information on social media · Understand and adhere to the organization’s social media policy · Add a disclaimer on social media bio. A suitable example is adding that views expressed on social media are their own opinions. |
| What to not do on social media | · Post patient or the organization’s stories: social media posts must not identify the patient, coworker, or the organization.
· Post any content about the patient or their family members on social media. · Connect with the patient or family members · Complain about the workplace |
| Protected Health Information (PHI) | According to HIPAA, PHI includes an individual’s past, present, or future health condition and the health care services such a person receives (Isola & Al Khalili, 2021). Payment details for health care services stored, maintained, transmitted electronically, or other forms constitute PHI. Examples of PHI include a patient’s demographic data, test results, and medical histories. Generally, it is anything that can be used to identify the patient, including their photos. |
| Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality | Privacy gives a patient the right to control the information that health care providers collect. Security involves internal and external measures to ensure that private information is not accessible. Confidentiality protects private information against unauthorized and malicious use. Unfortunately, patient information is vulnerable to phishing, damage, and unauthorized access and use, among other concerns, particularly in electronic health records (Argaw et al., 2020). Interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial in safeguarding sensitive information. The information technology department should adopt the necessary security mechanisms, including firewalls, as nurse leaders educate nurses on protecting patient information. Nurses should also embrace their professional mandate of protecting patient data. |
| Important Evidence on Social Media Usage and PHI | Inappropriate social media use has far-reaching consequences on nurses’ reputation, relationship with patients, and employment. In 2018, a nurse at Texas Children’s Hospital lost her job after posting comments on Facebook about a child with an unusual measles case in the facility (EveryNurse Staff, 2018). Numerous employees, including two doctors, led to a scenario where their facility was cited for violating HIPAA regulations after taking photos and videos of a patient. In another case, 50 employees lost their job at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago for viewing a patient’s medical records (Wofford, 2019). Generally, sanctions vary depending on the action, workplace regulations, and policies guiding social media use. They include suspensions, fines, criminal charges, and employment termination. |
References
Argaw, S. T., Troncoso-Pastoriza, J. R., Lacey, D., Florin, M. V., Calcavecchia, F., Anderson, D., …&Flahault, A. (2020). Cybersecurity of hospitals: Discussing the challenges and working towards mitigating the risks. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 20(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-020-01161-7
EveryNurse Staff. (2018). How nurses should be using social media.everynurse. https://everynurse.org/how-nurses-should-be-using-social-media/
Isola, S., & Al Khalili, Y. (2021).Protected Health Information. StatPearls [Internet].https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553131/
Reinbeck, D., &Antonacci, J. (2019). How nurses can use social media to their advantage. Nursing2021, 49(5), 61-63. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NURSE.0000554624.05347.6e
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Wofford, P. (2019). Jussie Smollett case: 50 hospital workers fired for alleged HIPAA violations. nurse.org. https://nurse.org/articles/smollett-hospital-workers-fired/
Assessment 2 Instructions: Protected Health Information (PHI): Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices.Instructions
In this assessment, assume you are a nurse in an acute care, community, school, nursing home, or other health care setting. Before your shift begins, you scroll through Facebook and notice that a coworker has posted a photo of herself and a patient on Facebook. The post states, “I am so happy Jane is feeling better. She is just the best patient I’ve ever had, and I am excited that she is on the road to recovery.”
You have recently completed your annual continuing education requirements at work and realize this is a breach of your organization’s social media policy. Your organization requires employees to immediately report such breaches to the privacy officer to ensure the post is removed immediately and that the nurse responsible receives appropriate corrective action.
You follow appropriate organizational protocols and report the breach to the privacy officer. The privacy officer takes swift action to remove the post. Due to the severity of the breach, the organization terminates the nurse.
Based on this incident’s severity, your organization has established a task force with two main goals:
• Educate staff on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care.
• Prevent confidentiality, security, and privacy breaches.
The task force has been charged with creating a series of interprofessional staff updates on the following topics:
• Social media best practices.
• What not to do: Social media.
• Social media risks to patient information.
• Steps to take if a breach occurs.
You are asked to select one or more of the topics and create the content for a staff update containing a maximum of two content pages. This assessment is not a traditional essay. It is a staff educational update about PHI. Consider creating a flyer, pamphlet, or PowerPoint slide. Remember it should not be more than two pages (excluding a title and a reference page).
The task force has asked team members assigned to the topics to include the following content in their updates in addition to content on their selected topics:
• What is protected health information (PHI)?
o Be sure to include essential HIPAA information.
• What are privacy, security, and confidentiality?
o Define and provide examples of privacy, security, and confidentiality concerns related to the use of technology in health care.
o Explain the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to safeguard sensitive electronic health information.
• What evidence relating to social media usage and PHI do interprofessional team members need to be aware of? For example:
o How many nurses have been terminated for inappropriate social media use in the United States?
o What types of sanctions have health care organizations imposed on interdisciplinary team members who have violated social media policies?
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