Five Things You Can Do To Protect Your Electronic Medical Record

With the introduction of technology and innovative software in the medical field, the work of doctors, medical centers and patients has become considerably more convenient. These technologies help regulate the hospital’s management system by providing a large-scale database for the patients’ records and helping retrieve them whenever they are needed. However, besides storing in the patients’ medical records and history, the hospitals are also answerable to the patients about the protection of the sensitive information they are trusted with. A breach of doctor and patient confidentiality can lead a hospital in a huge legal mess, creating mistrust among all of its other patients about its data handling capabilities.
In order to make sure that your Electronic Medical Record is protected, the government has passed regulatory legislation. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) seeks to protect the EMR systems working at the hospitals so that the patient’s records are kept private and confidential at all times. Some of the regulations that address this issue are:

1. Non-disclosure policy of EPHI (Electronic Personal Health Information) – Relevant patient data cannot be shared with any person who is not authorized to access it for any reason. However, it should easily be accessible to the doctors, medical personnel and other hospital staff who need to work with the patient records. This is called the Security Rule, which provides security against modifying or destroying the patient information without authorization. With this regulation, patients’ Electronic Medical Records can maintain their privacy under any circumstances.

2. Restricting physical accessibility - Provisions for security and other means of protecting the Electronic Medical Records should be made by the hospital or health facility. These precautions can help limit the availability of medical records to people who are not authorized to lay their hands on them. This is called the Facility Access and Control Rule and requires stringent regulations about the electronic handling, deleting and recycling of patient records.

3. Securing the network – The hospitals and medical facilities should craft such rules and ensure their implementation such that one can look up who accessed a certain EMR. Moreover, it should also track any modifications or changes made by a staff member in the hospital’s records at any given point in time.

4. The penalty – The hospital or medical facility must also have regulations and rules regarding the penalty it will impose in a scenario where a person accesses Electronic Medical Records without authorization. There should be stringent action against any such outsider or member of the hospital staff so that it is known that such a practice will not be tolerated at any point.

5. Managing records – There need to specific regulations and protocols functioning that would be applicable on how the patient records are being managed. At present, the HIPAA regulation is to ensure the storage of records for up to six years from the time they were last accessed.