Impact on Clinical Care, Patient/Provider Interactions, and Workflow

Impact on Clinical Care, Patient/Provider Interactions, and Workflow

Organizations, which have successfully implemented HIPAA, have realized an
improvement in clinical care, patient/provider interactions, and workflow. For instance,
healthcare providers can share protected health information for purposes of improved care. Since
the HIPAA prohibits healthcare professionals from editing the data without the patient's consent,
it is apparent that the shared health information will always be accurate. The use of this data
limits the possibilities of medical errors (The American Health Information Management
Association, 2018). Additionally, the fact that the HIPAA permits patients to review and amend
their medical records enhances patient-provider interaction. Besides, the workflow has
dramatically improved when users have well informed of the specific actions that they must
maintain to maximize data privacy and security (Office for Civil Rights, 2013).

Organizational Policies
Organizations have been expected to formulate policies that will encourage the successful
implementation of HIPAA (Samadbeik et al., 2015). The following procedures need to place to
address the named law,

1-Conduct periodic security updates for all systems including antivirus updates
2-Ensure access authorization through the use of passwords, fingerprints, smart cards, or a
combination of these
3-Continuous modification and maintenance of passwords
4-Conduct periodic audit trail to have an overview of how data to share across the system
5-Encryption of confidential information
6-All users must be log-off their workstations before leaving the area
7-All sensitive information has to trash safely after obtaining consent from the patient