Purpose
This paper contains the patient’s privacy rights and policies. It provides an overview of patient rights under the Health Insurance Accountability Act Portability Privacy Rule Act of 1996. The rule obligate patients the control over their medical information, which also includes the rights to evaluate and acquire a duplicate of their health reports and request changes. The HIPPA Privacy Rule ensures general principles to care for a person’s’ medical accounts and other private medical data and pertains to health procedures and healthcare providers that carry out health care connections by electronic means.
Definitions of Acts
HIPAA- A 1996 ACT checking Health Insurance Portability as well as Accountability
HHS- Health Human Services hold the law regulations of HIPAA
HITECH- A Health Information Act based on Technology for both Economic and Clinical health purposes.
Record set- a group of records that is managed by or for a facility
PHI- Protected Health Information
Policy and Procedures
The patient’s privacy rights must be protected and therefore a healthcare system should provide a holistic structure of procedure and policies to maintain this. Patients will receive a detailed copy of their privacy rights individually in a facility’s notice of privacy practice (Annas, 1488). The following are some of the privacy practices:
- Patient’s right to request a restriction on the use
Under this policy, the patient is allowed to determine whom to or not disclose the health information of PHI for treatment to. Moreover, the patient can further limit disclosures to relatives on their health conditions, location or death.
- The right to confidential communications for the patient
Patients are permitted to demand alternative means of communications of PHI from the facility or different locations.
- Revoking authorization by patients
The patient has the right to alter the decision to use or disclose PHI by putting the revocation into writing. However, the revocation does not apply to information that has already been used or disclosed in reliance to authorization or if it was for the purposes of acquiring insurance data.
- The right by patient ’s to inspect and replicate PHI
Persons can request for a replicated copy of their PHI and analyze it from a selected record set. A record set establishes informed decisions about patients but is sometimes not included in particular circumstances.
- The right by patient ’s to amend PHI
A facility’s record set is liable to amendment by request from a patient. The process for acting and receiving a patient’s request to have the amendment is described in the facility’s privacy request.
- The right to a recording of disclosures by the patient
The facility is required to disclose a patient is accounting of PHI or business associates that have been established six year before the request by a patient for an accounting.
- Patient Complaints
The patient has the right to report a complaint to the facility or the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in accordance to the facility. The right to file a complaint should be indicated in the facility’s Notice of Privacy Practice Procedure to file complaints by patients as described in the Privacy Act.
- Notification of Breach of Unsecured PHI
Patients have the right to flag any breach of unsecured information on the PHI according to the privacy breach notification.
All health facilities are expected to abide by the policy in order to facilitate the protection of the patient’s privacy rights.
Work Cited
Annas, George J. "HIPAA regulations-a new era of medical-record privacy?"New England Journal of Medicine 348.15 (2003): 1486-1490.
