How to Protect Health Information
Protecting a patient’s health information is one of a health care clinic's major concerns. Patient confidentiality is there to ensure that a person can be treated for any disease or illness without the whole world knowing it. It is imperative that care be taken to protect a patient's health files so that misuse of the information is less likely.
- Maintaining secure filing procedures is important in both electronic and paper files. Medical records should be stores in a safe and secure place. Whether you use an electronic filing system or a paper one, using some sort of filing system like the alpha-numeric system will help you keep track of where the files are and ensure that none of them get mixed up.
- A patient's files should be password protected and each different health care professional should be given the appropriate level of access. For instance, a pharmacy technician does not need any more information about a patient other than previous and current drugs they are taking, allergies to medications and prescription information.
- Requiring written consent of a patient for a doctor to share information is one way of insuring that only the appropriate people will be able to see their medical records. If a patient does not consent to share their health information, nobody but their doctor will have access to the records.
- Items that no longer need to be kept in a medical file should be shredded. In some medical facilities, a shredder is used to destroy the records and then the shredded records are shredded again to ensure that they cannot be pieced back together.