HIPAA Privacy Rules Assignment

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HIPAA PRIVACY RULE ASSIGNMENT HCA322: HEALTH CARE ETHICS AND MEDICAL LAW In health care, physicians and team members must comply with the HIPAA Privacy Rule when dealing with a patient. If the HIPAA Privacy Rule is somehow breached, a physician or a health care team member can be penalized. In certain situations, the penalty can be severe and the team member involved can lose their license. On top of losing a medical license, a hospital can also be fined and lose their business. This paper will help to analyze exactly what the HIPAA Privacy Rule means and what the consequences are if it is breached. This paper will also analyze a particular case that involves a nurse that mistakenly breaches a patient’s privacy. Patients are…show more content…
This is an unfortunate event for the patient and any health care team member. A breach in confidentiality goes against the HIPAA privacy rule and has severe consequences. First, the patient is affected because they feel like it’s the hospital’s fault for the leak in their health information. The patient feels betrayed and loses all trust in the facility. This causes a potential loss of business from the patient and whoever the patient tells about the incident. Before long, the hospital will have a bad reputation in the community’s eyes. This is never a good thing for any health care team member involved. Depending on the severity of the breach, it’s also possible that someone can lose their medical license on top of being fined. A health care team must learn to obey the rules and regulations of the HIPAA Privacy…show more content…
The rules change when it comes to pregnant minors like what’s involved in the case study. Children are usually classified as adolescents when they are age 18 or older. But if a minor is pregnant, they are automatically considered an adult regardless of their age. Even minors have rights just like adults do. In the case of confidentiality, “the minor has to be allowed and supported to make autonomous decisions after being deemed competent to understand the implications of doing so.” (Cornock, 2011) In this case, the minor is 15 and is now a parent of a fresh newborn. This makes the patient an adult, which sheds a whole new light on the HIPAA privacy rule
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