Patients, their families, medical personnel, government officials, and several others place high importance on maintaining the privacy of patient health information. The laws mandate that a large number of significant individuals and organizations that deal with health information have security measures in place to protect the privacy of individuals’ health information (Moore & Frye, 2019). State laws and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) Privacy Rule are the two main legal frameworks that safeguard patient privacy by limiting the sharing and disclosing of people’s personal information.
State laws provide guidelines on the security measures that public health organizations should implement to safeguard patient data confidentially and the rights patients may have to ensure that the information is secure and kept private. Conversely, HIPAA privacy law usually permits but does not compel covered healthcare providers to let patients decide whether their health information may be shared with others for essential purposes like treatments, compensation, and healthcare operations (Clayton et al., 2019). HIPAA and state laws allow patients to choose which individuals may view the documents proving their connection to ethical behavior.
HIPAA law is implemented in healthcare on occasions when hospitals get fined for taking too long to provide patients with their medical information after they request it. HIPAA violations include failing to respect a patient’s legal rights (Lederman, 2018). State laws can be implemented in healthcare in a case where a patient goes to see a psychologist. The doctor must ensure the patient signs a consent form for the disclosure of her records. State laws may be applied when a patient meets a psychologist since the patient must sign a consent form. State law was implemented in this case because it protects patients’ privacy by requiring psychologists to seek written agreement and prohibiting the doctor from releasing patient information without consent. Since both laws provide patients control over who can access their records, they both improve the privacy of patient information. In general, state laws and HIPAA ensure patient privacy by limiting the sharing and releasing of people’s personal information.
References
Clayton, E. W., Evans, B. J., Hazel, J. W., &; Rothstein, M. A. (2019). The Law of Genetic Privacy: Applications, implications, and limitations. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 6(1), 1–36. Web.
Lederman, R. (2018). The Medical Privacy Law: Can hospitals comply using current health information systems? Proceedings. 17th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems. Web.
Moore, W., & Frye, S. (2019). Review of HIPAA, part 1: History, protected health information, and privacy and security rules. Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology, 47(4), 269–272. Web.