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Read the post and Decide whether or not you agree with their assessment? Explain your answer.

1) Health Information Portability and Accountability Act

 HIPAA was enacted in 1996 and it sets national standards for protecting personal health information. It is more commonly known as The Privacy Rule and it addresses the actions that need to be taken to assure that unauthorized personnel do not have access to individuals' personal health records. The Privacy Rule applies to health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and any healthcare provider who transmits health information in electronic form. What is protected is known as "individually identifiable health information," which includes all demographic information on the individual as well as healthcare plans, treatments, and payments. If the release of any of this information is needed for whatever purpose, written authorization from the individual regarding specific terms and conditions of its use is required by this law.

A positive aspect of HIPAA i.e. The Privacy Rule is that there is one provision that restricts anyone from using and/or sharing patient's information. Each organization must get a signed form from a patient indicating to whom the organization may share the patient's medical information. Without that written permission, the information cannot be shared in any way that would allow an employee to identify the patient from medical information shared. It has also help create a culture of compliance and security within healthcare organizations.

Many would argue about whether or not HIPAA is good for patient care. Some negative aspects of HIPAA is that health research is not as easy as it used to be. Researchers within healthcare organization cannot do studies without patient consent causing costs of recruitment for studies and surveys to rise. Another negative aspect is there are significant breaches each year which results in losses that extend the billions. According to the Ponemon Institute (2011), it is far more expensive to be noncompliant than compliant regarding privacy and HIPAA issues. Costs for lawsuits and breaches are often never fully recovered.

Four weeks ago I posted that the healthcare system is ever-changing. I still stand by that definition because it's still constantly changing. With the development of new technology, medications, laws, etc. there is always room for improvement. We need to be able to adapt to the chances.

In the next five years, I see the use of electronic medical records being the only source of retaining patient's health history. In the military, we have a system called HAIMS where we scan and upload medical documentation for a patient and it can be viewed by the whole hospital as well as other bases. Also, the Joint Commission is moving towards guidelines that are more patient-centered.

A new development that is coming along is a radiation oncologist at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle is working with surgeons to administer a single dose of interoperative radiation therapy in the operating room to women with breast cancer who meet certain criteria, eliminating weeks of radiation treatment post-surgery. Another is the depression automated remote monitoring system (D-ARMS). It's a phone system that makes multiple simultaneous outbound calls to patients at high risk for depression on both a scheduled and data-triggered basis and collects touchtone or spoken responses to recorded questions.