Current Ethical or legal Healthcare Concern Essay Example

Current Ethical or legal Healthcare Concern Essay Example Current Ethical or legal Healthcare Concern Paper Current Ethical or legal Healthcare Concern Paper Essay Topic: Current Health care is one of the most important services necessary for the well being of human life yet it is marked with special ethical and legal requirements which guarantees the privacy, security and confidentiality of the patient. The importance of protecting patient’s information is evidenced by the legislated restrictions by the state which prohibits patient’s information to be revealed to any unauthorized person unless it is legalized by the patient or under special circumstances such as promoting public health or protecting child abuse (Shea, Levin, Lyer, 2006). This paper is written to discuss confidentiality of health information as an ethical and legal concern of health care. As per the American College of Health Care Executives, health care professionals have professional, ethical and a moral responsibility give patients medical information the confidentiality and security it deserves (Rodrigues, 2009). It is therefore an obligation of the health care executives to determine the rightness of disclosing the patients’ medical information to the third party under the effects of the state laws and the federal laws at large. In order to achieve this, the author of this paper proposes health professionals to put in consideration a number of things to on the list being the limited disclosure of patient’s medical information to any unauthorized third party. This is because health care professionals have to seek all the details necessary for diagnosis of the patient’s disease. Any betrayal of the patient can amount to loss of confident and hence failure to express there some information concerning their problems. Another obligation of the health care executives is to ensure that the health care center’s policies are inline with the existing state and federal laws and regulation. As a responsibility, they should make sure that all the health care workers are knowledgeable on the importance of keeping patient’s information confidential and secure as well as the corresponding consequences of disclosing it (Rodrigues, 2009). The health care personnel should be in a position to appreciate their responsibility in this matter and the punishment which will follow on violation. To achieve this, health care executives will have to come up with means of protecting patient’s medical records as well as any computerized data through a well reliable and secure storage system which as well provide quick access of the information when required by the authorized personnel. In addition to this, a disaster recovery system which will enable the institution to keep a track on the accessibility and use of the medical records as well as giving a feed back on who had accessed the information (Rodrigues, 2009). Further to this, identification systems of patients which do not involve personal details such as names should be designed in order to eliminate this unethical behavior of disclosing patient’s information. Health care organizations still needs to come up with a well crafted and written agreement which defines the circumstances under which the patient’s information is disclosed, people who are legitimate to access the patient’s information, the punishment to be endorsed to the victims of this mistake and the procedures of compensating the patient’s whose information has been disclosed (Shea, Levin, Lyer, 2006). This agreement should also contain procedures of educating the patients about confidentiality and security of their private information and should be inconsistency with the state and the federal laws. In conclusion therefore, patient’s medical; information should be confidential and kept secure. It is governed by the state and the federal laws and therefore it is the responsibility of the health care executives to come up with policies which will ensure that these laws are adhered to. References Rodrigues, R. (2009). Ethical and Legal Issues in Interactive Health Communications: A Call for International Cooperation. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1761840/ Shea, M., Levin, B., Lyer, P. (2006). Medical Legal Aspects of Medical Records. New York: Lawyers Judges Publishing Company.