Problem
Case Study: Specialized Patient Records (Competency II.1 Apply privacy strategies to health information)
You are the Director of Health Information Services in the Good Morning Medical Center (MEDCEN) that maintains both a psychiatric unit and a substance abuse unit in additional to general medical and surgical units. Your MEDCEN plans to join a computer network with 15 hospitals statewide, which allow online access to lab data, regardless of which facility performed the lab work. None of the other 15 facilities offer psychiatric or substance abuse treatment.
Identify and discuss the confidentiality issues present with such a network, in light of the statutory, regulatory, and accrediting requirements governing patients treated in these units.
Task
a) Who should have access to what data for what purpose?
b) Should the full lab data be available, or only an abstract of information?
c) How do you track access to the lab data with computer terminals present throughout the network?