Data integrity in the healthcare sector

Data integrity is becoming increasingly important in the healthcare industry.

With the legalization of digitalized patient data, expanding regulation, and the increasing importance of information between patients, payers, and providers, all of these factors are aimed toward improved information security (Dong, 2016).

Healthcare systems and data breaches

Healthcare systems are critical to the enhancement of healthcare provision and the reduction of associated expenses. Evidence has demonstrated that insufficiency of security measures has resulted in many data breaches in recent years, exposing the private data of health patients to threats such as social shame from the population. Additionally, another study shows that 75% of the patients have a concern when the health web shares their information without their knowledge. This paper will give a holistic outline of the impact of the data integrity on the delivery of healthcare and address its negative aspects and appropriate measures to improve them.

The Concern of Privacy of the Healthcare Consumers

It is vital to examine the perception of the patients about their healthcare data with a specific interest in a particular class of patients. For instance, HIV patients, adolescents, and mental health patients. Recent research for confidentiality of the patient’s data showed that patients advocate that their data should remain confidential and can only be shared with parties involved. However, patients who have HIV do not prefer their information to be shared with anybody unless the physicians. The majority of the patients firmly believe that the information should never reach third parties (Epstein, 2012). The sharing of identifiable information to other parties, like the families and employers, according to the extensive body of research is termed as the breach of the information security of the patients. The healthcare professionals are stopped from sharing anonymized health records with putting the patient’s consent. Failure to protect the health information of the healthcare consumers is unethical practice in the practice of medical healthcare.

User Perspective and Disposition

The utility and prospects theory affect the user personal disposition to reveal their health information to online health websites. The prior experience of users with websites and attacks on their privacy plays a significant role in the patient’s trust in the health website and level of concern about their privacy. A recent survey done showed that only 10% of the patients would allow their doctors to use their medical information for a range of applications like training physicians, merging their data with other patients to provide useful information for future treatment of similar ailment, and deducting research information about certain diseases and their treatment (Eichelberg, 2015). Another study that investigated the divergence of the view of the patients toward health record whether computer-based, paper-based, or networked PHR found that the relative perception of the patient’s concern for privacy accelerated with the level of the technology. Highly educated patients prefer technological advanced Personal Health Records (PHR). Data integrity is, therefore, a matter of concern among the patients that ought to be respected by the medical health practitioners to enhance efficiency in the provision of healthcare.

Physician’s Perspective of Regulatory Compliance and Information Access Control

The administrative and medical staff in all healthcare facilities should protect the privacy of the patients’ information. Having access to patients’ data means proper maintenance of their medical records with an exclusion of malicious manipulation of the health records. Critics say regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and has made the provision of healthcare involved adding to the complexity of those rules (Epstein, 2012). The concept of the HIPAA suggests that patients should be consulted before using their health data. This move is an ethical one that avoids the breach of confidentiality. However, the privacy laws possess adverse effects on the effort to provide quality healthcare to the patients. The aim to achieve an interoperable health system is uncertain.

Information Access Control and Integrity

The administrative costs arising are a high breeding complexity of the healthcare providers to undertake their roles. Information access control, on the other hand, offers the solutions to manage data access privileges in the healthcare organizations. However, this process is a complex one and requires consideration of the processes of work and the organization culture to deliver adequate information security (Dong, 2016). The aim of the information access control management is to improve transparency of the hospital’s health record systems and to urge patients to refine their health data access rights to the providers of healthcare.

Integrity of Information in Healthcare and its Adverse Effects

The risks of information security are commonly known as the breach of confidentiality. Designs of the information systems may be a threat to the information security. The risk of overriding patterns of clinicians using both qualitative and quantitative research methods is common. If the data management control systems get deployed without feasibility studies, this could prompt medical error risks that arise from fragmented data (Eichelberg, 2015). CPOE should be integrated into all systems to ensure a coordinated efficacy of the pediatric support. Research shows that technology alone cannot satisfy the goals of quality care. Therefore, there should be a balance of technological investment, people, and the knowledge base.

The Negative Aspect of Information Security and Privacy (Personal Experience)

Technology has both powerful and negative impacts. Threats to the privacy of information pose security risks breeding safety concerns of the patient’s information. The concern of the healthcare consumers has gotten to the forefront (Epstein, 2012). The consumers’ willingness to share their information is a challenge to the adoption of eHealth. For instance, upon admission for a health checkup, the administrative shared my health information with another hospital to compare the symptoms. This happened without consent which according to me was the breach of data privacy. Failures of information security may result in fraudulent healthcare. To improve these problems, the healthcare sector in collaboration with the federal government should lobby the patients to refine their privacy concerns in healthcare provision. This move is to enable the clinicians to operate within a limit that cannot breach the confidentiality of the patient’s information. To curb the financial losses, the managers in the healthcare sector have enacted measures to protect fraudulent alteration for the loss of the economic data.

Conclusion

It is evident that scholars have evaluated the information security and privacy issue in a broad perspective. The review in this paper shows multifaceted streams with each one focusing on a distinct aspect of information security and confidentiality. The main conclusions of this piece are that there exists the need to refine the dimension of data integrity but without violating the demands of the healthcare consumer (Dong, 2016). This insight is significantly helpful in ensuring the privacy of information for patients when their information is stored, shared, or even processed. The enactment of the HIPAA will surprisingly ensure that little attention is given to the financial risks, e.g. healthcare fraud.

References

Dong, C., and Dulay, N. (2016) ―Privacy Preserving Trust Negotiation for Pervasive Healthcare. Proceedings of Pervasive Health Conferences and Workshops

Eichelberg, M., aden, T., Riesmeier, J., Dogac, A., laleci, G. (2015) ―A Survey and Analysis of Electronic Healthcare Record Standards. ACM Computing Survey, vol. 37, no. 4, pp 277-315,

Epstein, R.A. (2012) ―HIPAA on Privacy: Its Unintended and Intended Consequences. Cato Journal, vol. 22, no.1, pp 13-31