HIPAA and Appropriate Social Media Use in Health Care

HIPAA and Appropriate Social Media Use in Health Care

 Social Media Usage

Numerous cases of inappropriate use of social media have been reported in the USA. To begin with, Clark (2021) reports that a New York-Presbyterian Hospital nurse who uploaded a photo of a trauma room to Instagram was fired (Clark, 2021). Additionally, Spectrum Health residents photographed and posted pictures of a patient during surgery. This resulted in legal action and penalties being taken against them and their facility. Furthermore, after sharing videos mocking patient mistreatment, a nurse at Citadel Winston-Salem was fired (Clark, 2021). In another case, Clark (2021) reports that, as a result of exposing PHI, Elite Dental Associates was fined $10,000. It is worth noting that it would have been possible to receive a fine of up to $1.4 million for each offense; therefore, the fine indicated leniency toward Elite Dental Associates (Clark, 2021).

Healthcare institutions have formulated various initiatives to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of PHI.  To begin with, they have embraced periodic training of the interdisciplinary team. The training focuses on HIPAA and its relevance in current practice. Secondly, healthcare institutions have leveraged specialists such as nurse informaticists to develop new processes, policies, and guidelines to enable the interdisciplinary team to uphold the privacy and confidentiality of PHI (Forman et al., 2020).

The HITECH Act was enacted in 2009 to uphold the appropriate use of health information technology. The scope of this Act entails security and privacy issues that accompany the electronic transmission of health information (Nair & Dreyfus, 2018). HITECH advocates for strict implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and interoperability (Lin et al., 2019).

References

Bani Issa, W., Al Akour, I., Ibrahim, A., Almarzouqi, A., Abbas, S., Hisham, F., & Griffiths, J. (2020). Privacy, confidentiality, security, and patient safety concerns about electronic health records. International Nursing Review, 67(2), 218–230. https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12585

Clark, M. (2021). 15+ Real-World Examples of Social Media HIPAA Violations — Etactics. Etactics | Revenue Cycle Software. Retrieved 8 May 2022, from https://etactics.com/blog/social-media-hipaa- violations?msclkid=c1fa3555cebc11ecb29b39ad1f6ea685.

Forman, T. M., Armor, D. A., & Miller, A. S. (2020). A review of clinical informatics competencies in nursing to inform best practices in education and nurse faculty development. Nursing Education Perspectives, 41(1), E3–E7. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000588

HIPAA Journal. (2022). What is Protected Health Information? https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-is-protected-health-information/

Isola, S., & Khalili, A. W. (2023). Protected Health Information.: StatPearls Publishing https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553131/

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Prepare a 2-page interprofessional staff update on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care.

Introduction
As you begin to consider the assessment, it would be an excellent choice to complete the Breach of Protected Health Information (PHI) activity. The activity will support your success with the assessment by creating the opportunity for you to test your knowledge of potential privacy, security, and confidentiality violations of protected health information. The activity is not graded and counts towards course engagement.

Health professionals today are increasingly accountable for the use of protected health information (PHI). Various government and regulatory agencies promote and support privacy and security through a variety of activities. Examples include:

Meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR).
EHR incentive programs should be provided through Medicare and Medicaid.
Enforcement of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules.
Release of educational resources and tools to help providers and hospitals address privacy, security, and confidentiality risks in their practices.
Technological advances, such as the use of social media platforms and applications for patient progress tracking and communication, have provided more access to health information and improved communication between care providers and patients.

At the same time, advances such as these have resulted in more risk for protecting PHI. Nurses typically receive annual training on protecting patient information in their everyday practice. This training usually emphasizes privacy, security, and confidentiality best practices such as:

Keeping passwords secure.
Logging out of public computers.
Patient information should be shared only with those directly providing care or who have been granted permission to receive this information.
Today, one of the major risks associated with the privacy and confidentiality of patient identity and data relates to social media. Many nurses and other health care providers place themselves at risk when they use social media or other electronic communication systems inappropriately. For example, a Texas nurse was recently terminated for posting patient vaccination information on Facebook. In another case, a New York nurse was terminated for posting an insensitive emergency department photo on her Instagram account.

Healthcare providers today must develop their skills in mitigating risks to their patients and themselves related to patient information. At the same time, they need to be able to distinguish between effective and ineffective uses of social media in health care.

This assessment will require you to develop a staff update for the interprofessional team to encourage team members to protect the privacy, confidentiality, and security of patient information.

Preparation
To successfully prepare to complete this assessment, complete the following:

Review the infographics on protecting PHI provided in the resources for this assessment, or find other infographics to review. These infographics serve as examples of how to succinctly summarize evidence-based information.
Analyze these infographics and distill them into five or six principles of what makes them effective. As you design your interprofessional staff update, apply these principles. Note: In a staff update, you will not have all the images and graphics that an infographic might contain. Instead, focus your analysis on what makes the messaging effective.
Select from any of the following options, or a combination of options, the focus of your interprofessional staff update:
Social media best practices.
What not to do: social media.
Social media risks to patient information.
Steps to take if a breach occurs.
Conduct independent research on the topic you have selected and review the suggested resources for this assessment. This information will serve as the source(s) of the information contained in your interprofessional staff update. Consult the BSN Program Library Research Guide to help identify scholarly and/or authoritative sources.
Instructions
In this assessment, assume you are a nurse in an acute care, community, school, nursing home, or other healthcare setting. Before your shift begins, you scroll through Facebook and notice that a coworker has posted a photo of herself and a patient on Facebook. The post states, “I am so happy Jane is feeling better. She is just the best patient I’ve ever had, and I am excited that she is on the road to recovery.”

You have recently completed your annual continuing education requirements at work and realize this is a breach of your organization’s social media policy. Your organization requires employees to immediately report such breaches to the privacy officer to ensure the post is removed immediately and that the nurse responsible receives appropriate corrective action.

You follow appropriate organizational protocols and report the breach to the privacy officer. The privacy officer takes swift action to remove the post. Due to the severity of the breach, the organization terminates the nurse.

Based on this incident’s severity, your organization has established a task force with two main goals:

Educate staff on HIPAA and appropriate social media use in health care.
Prevent confidentiality, security, and privacy breaches.
The task force has been charged with creating a series of interprofessional staff updates on the following topics:

Social media best practices.
What not to do: Social media.
Social media risks to patient information.
Steps to take if a breach occurs.
You are asked to select one or more of the topics and create the content for a staff update containing a maximum of two content pages. This assessment is not a traditional essay. It is a staff educational update about PHI. Consider creating a flyer, pamphlet, or PowerPoint slide (not an entire presentation). Remember, it should not be more than two pages (excluding a title and a reference page).

The task force has asked team members assigned to the topics to include the following content in their updates in addition to content on their selected topics:

What is protected health information (PHI)?
Be sure to include essential HIPAA information.
What are privacy, security, and confidentiality?
Define and provide examples of privacy, security, and confidentiality concerns related to the use of technology in health care.
Explain the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to safeguard sensitive electronic health information.
What evidence relating to social media usage and PHI do interprofessional team members need to be aware of? For example:
How many nurses have been terminated for inappropriate social media use in the United States?
What types of sanctions have healthcare organizations imposed on interdisciplinary team members who have violated social media policies?
What have been the financial penalties assessed against healthcare organizations for inappropriate social media use?
What evidence-based strategies have healthcare organizations employed to prevent or reduce confidentiality, privacy, and security breaches, particularly related to social media usage?
Notes
Your staff update is limited to two double-spaced content pages. Be selective about the content you choose to include in your update so you can meet the page length requirement. Include need-to-know information. Omit nice-to-know information.
Many times, people do not read staff updates, do not read them carefully, or do not read them to the end. Ensure your staff update piques staff members’ interest, highlights key points, and is easy to read. Avoid overcrowding the update with too much content.
Also, a separate reference page should be supplied that includes two or three peer-reviewed and one or two non-peer-reviewed resources (for a total of 3–5 resources) to support the staff update content.