Ethical Issues In Healthcare Assignment 3
Ethical Issues In Healthcare Assignment 3
HIPAA or Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
This act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in1996 after the enactment by the US congress. The main intention was to guarantee the coverage of health insurance even after terminating employment. Kennedy Kassebaum was the proposer of this bill as a way of saving money. The healthcare industry supported the proposal given the application of standardized electronic transactions and the desired code sets, record formats, and identifiers.
HIPAA has three main components. These components are privacy standards, and code and transactions standards in 2003, and security standards in 2005. The privacy standards emphasis on the protection of a person’s health information and the provision of particular rights to patients like accounting disclosures. The security standards build electronic transactions’ safeguards on physical, technical, administrative levels. These standards also link with the privacy standards. The code and transaction standards regulate the manner in which health information is used in processing claims. Through the codes and transitions standards, administrative simplification is achieved on a national scale.
To healthcare system, HIPAA introduced a new dimension in the manner of operation by the physician and medical centers (Purtilo & Doherty, 2011). The main impacts have been experienced in clinical care, research, implementation costs and education and training. HIPAA regulates the manner in which research is carried out by requiring researchers to use charts. HIPAA has also restricted the ability of researchers to evaluate patients prospectively through the use of follow up. In addition, the introduction of stiff penalties has prompted physicians to withhold patient information even to authorized assessors. In order to meet HIPAA requirements, institutions have to incur development and revamping costs which affects medical center finances. The right implementation of HIPAA has called for proper education and training.
HITECH
Saving lives at low costs is the main intention of the HITECH act. This Act was established to facilitate the adoption of electronic health records or HRE and underneath technology within the United States. The bill was signed into law in 2009 by president Obama. The bill was part of a monetary incentive bill referred to as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Through HITECH, the government was to start issuing financial incentives to healthcare providers who showed momentous application of EHR. These incentives are eligible till 2015 after which penalties would be levied for lack of EHR use. For the personnel intended to support Health IT, the act issued funding for training centers.
There are several impacts of HITECH healthcare delivery system. One of the most important is the reinforcement of the federal privacy and security laws (Purtilo & Doherty, 2011). This is because the act prevents misuse of identifiable health information through the increased use of health IT in the healthcare system. The act also promises increased transparency and accountability to meet the demands of stakeholder, patients and regulators. Within clinical settings, HITECH is applied through restricted access to patient healthcare information. This have seen the healthcare center being forced to put in place stronger security measures as a way of promoting patient safety and avoiding the multi-million dollar fines associated. It seems to me like this act is the muscle needed to promote privacy and security on patients. The implementation of this act has also seen healthcare institutions combine both physical and network access management in efforts to comely with HITECH. Instead of using one factor authentication for smart cards, two-factor authentication has been adopted.
Shared decision making
Within healthcare settings shared decision making should be made the norm. Numerous reasons exist in favor of this statement. Firstly, shared decision making promotes respect for autonomy. This occurs through the promotion of individuals into making informed choices that have been reasoned well (Stiggelbout, 2012). Secondly, shared decision making is essential for beneficence. The physician has room to balance the payback and the threats associated with a given form treatment. Thirdly, shared decision making prevents non maleficence as the physician offers his or her services while avoiding harm. Through shared decision making, it is possible to minimize unwarranted variations of practice. This guarantees that there is no overuse or underuse of healthcare information. Through shared decision making in healthcare, justice is promoted as patient choose to have few procedures. Justice promotes the distribution of benefits, fair sharing of costs, and distribution of risks. When less educed persons are used to the same extent as the educated, there is the promotion of equity through shared decision making in healthcare.
In my opinion, the concept of shared decision making is relevant. This is because shared decision making promotes mutualistic relationship between the patient and the physician reveals balanced power and resources (Stiggelbout, 2012). Such relationship promotes the involvement of patients which results to better quality of care, elevated satisfaction and improved self-esteem in patients. These outcomes emphasis the importance of engaging patients equally participate in their personal care. This is extremely relevant especially where the physicians find themselves in situations where there lacks a best choice. The practice also promotes the utilization of decisions that are favorable to both the patient and the best practices available.
Good communication
During my practice, the most stunning patient interaction was between me and an old lady who had an eye surgery. I was to take care or her to ensure she remains in the badges. The old lady kept complaining that it was her son’s proposal to have the surgery and not hers. She admitted not being forced to take the surgery, but she did not want to see ever again. This was a way of hiding her curiosity and anxiety to see again. I listened to her every word and gave polite answers where necessary. On several occasions, I sought for clarifications just to make sure I heard the patient right. The patient insisted on taking off her eye badges to confirm that she could no longer see and true to her word, her eyesight was not restored. The patient got extremely annoyed and called me a liar for promising her sight restoration after the surgery.
Essential elements of communication here are listening and seeking for clarifications and avoiding offensive language despite provocations (Purtilo & Doherty, 2011). Through clarifications, the conversation kept going as the patient kept talking and asking questions that I politely responded. Careful listening promoted my understanding of the patient’s concerns thereby assisting me to generate appropriate answers to her conversation. Avoiding offensive language resulted to the consolation of the woman despite the lack of sight restoration. Listening to the patient provided the establishment of best intervention for them. The woman could not understand that her sight would be restored after several days. However, the woman’s family understood this and kept encouraging her.
References
Purtilo, R, & Doherty, R.(2011), Ethic dimensions in the health profession. Elsevier Saunders. Philadelphia.
Stiggelbout, A., et al (2012). Shared decision making: really putting patients at the center of healthcare. BMJ Vol. 344.
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