Introduction
Changes, new policies, and documentation introduction can be stressful for the established system and its members. This is a particularly difficult challenge for the healthcare system, as medical professionals are at the forefront of all current crises, including medical, psychological, economic, etc. It means that medical workers have a hard job taking care of people and supporting their well-being no matter what. Thus, constantly improving, changing, and adapting are the creeds of modern medicine. If new policies, practices, and protocols can make a positive difference, improving the quality of services and patient outcomes, they should be implemented despite the transition costs.
The Importance of Being Accredited by The Joint Commission
The Joint Commission (TJC) is the largest health care standards-setting body in the United States. TJC is governed by the Board of Commissioners, comprised of a diverse group of medical professionals whose purpose is to develop, improve and maintain high standards of patient care and treatment delivery. Various healthcare organizations can be accredited voluntarily, in which case commission inspectors visit them at least once every 39 months (Lam et al., 2018). Moreover, the organizations undergoing accreditation are forced to monitor compliance with the standards regularly and independently monitor their compliance.
Joint Commission certification brings many benefits to the hospital. Firstly, it is a sign of quality for the public, increases the credibility of the medical organization, and attracts customers. Secondly, certification expands the organization’s ability to participate in tenders and government programs or receive insurance compensation (Lam et al., 2018). Third, the study by Lam et al. (2018) showed that accreditation positively affects patient experience and quality of care, up to a reduction in mortality rates in accredited hospitals. Constant self-monitoring allows employees to improve their skills and knowledge, creating a culture of maintaining high standards in the organization.
The Difference Between Licensing and Accreditation
Licensing and accreditation are not interchangeable terms, but there is a relationship and some overlap. Accreditation is the conduct of a voluntary self-assessment by an organization in accordance with recognized standards of practice. Accreditation is conducted and supervised by a third-party organization that provides a certificate of compliance with the declared standards. The accreditation process can be repeated every 2-4 years. Licensing is usually a compulsory procedure that both organizations and individuals go through. Licensing protects consumers from substandard service providers and ensures that a given healthcare professional or facility has the right to provide certain services. Often, health care providers are required by regulators to be accredited to be licensed to provide certain services.
The Importance of Patient Privacy
One of the most important medical accreditation standards is providing quality patient care while ensuring the confidentiality of the patient’s personal information regarding their medical records. Clients trust the medical organization and specialists with their health and a lot of personal data. Neglecting this data threatens patients, even if doctors and nurses think that informal relationships within the staff will not affect clients’ lives. However, studies show that most data breaches that have severe consequences for patients are unintentional (George & Bhila, 2019). Inattention on the part of medical personnel to the terms of privacy, confidentiality, and security regulations can significantly damage clients and the reputation of a medical institution.
On the one hand, clients must be aware that the organization will store and use their health information and give informed consent. Patients should be aware of what information will be contained in the records, the terms and conditions for keeping that information, and how it can be accessed. The Authorization should govern the process of providing personal data for the Release of Information protocol (George & Bhila, 2019). On the other hand, health care institutions must protect the institution’s databases (George & Bhila, 2019). All personal information must be deleted or altered if medical data is used for research purposes (George & Bhila, 2019). All healthcare professionals should be trained in data security and know the legal basis for individually identifiable health information (HIPAA Privacy Rule).
The Difference between Privacy, Confidentiality, And Security in the Healthcare Setting
The terms “privacy,” “confidentiality,” and “security” have become paramount in today’s society when every person trusts their data to electronic storage. Medical confidentiality is the idea that patient records should be confidential and secure (Price & Cohen, 2019). Patient privacy includes physical and informational privacy and the privacy of decisions that protect the right to personal choice. Confidentiality in a medical facility means keeping patient data secret from other people or institutions, even after death (Noroozi et al., 2018). Confidentiality is a patient right that healthcare professionals must respect. Compliance with the privacy policy is at the heart of the doctor-patient relationship.
Security in a medical setting is understood as ensuring the confidentiality of a patient’s private data. Medical organizations face significant risks of data leakage, as medical information is often of interest to intruders (Price & Cohen, 2019). Moreover, because many medical workers have access to the patient’s private information, this increases the likelihood of disclosure of data by negligence (Price & Cohen, 2019). Healthcare institutions must simultaneously be concerned about the cybersecurity of data and implementing a culture among staff that prevents careless treatment of patient data.
PHI and the Function of the HIPAA Privacy Rule
The human right to information protection is inviolable and protected by the state. Therefore, in 1996, the US Department of Health and Human Services issued the “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act” (HIPAA) which is also known as the “Privacy Rule” (Moore & Frye, 2019). In this document, data that a patient to a healthcare facility provides is referred to as “protected health information” (PHI) (Moore & Frye, 2019). HIPAA was created to introduce new standards for electronic data storage, reduce paperwork, and efficiently share data between hospitals and insurance companies. Currently, HIPAA maintains the confidentiality of private patient data, including notice of retention rules and information leakage (Moore & Frye, 2019). HIPAA specifies precisely who has the right to receive confidential information and in what order, including the receipt of medical data by the patient himself only upon special request.
Ethics and Ethical Behavior in Healthcare
Health care ethics is a set of moral principles and values that guide healthcare professionals in providing treatment and care for patients. Often, appealing to medical ethics requires, first of all, to think not about the comfort of medical personnel but the benefit for the health and life of the patient. This means that sometimes habitual behavior or work style is not only ineffective but also harmful. Lack of security and PHI protocols between workers leaves the patient vulnerable. Breach of personal data security can become a serious problem, exposing the patient to the risk of exploitation and the medical staff and organization to the risk of litigation (Chiruvella & Guddati, 2021). Failure to comply with ethical behavior in healthcare carries significant risks, including flogging a license to provide medical services.
Risk management in healthcare
Modern healthcare and the general health of the population are in crisis and require qualitative changes, the correct allocation of resources and time, and an improvement in the risk management system. In the field of health and medicine, the price of a mistake is high, so medical workers and managers need to pay attention to timely monitoring of the situation, developing security measures, and risk control (Meshkov et al., 2020). Possible actions include passing the institution’s accreditation, which helps improve the hospital’s and its personnel’s work. Formalization and the use of security protocols can help ensure procedures are not violated (Meshkov et al., 2020). Health professionals and managers should be involved in developing a new rice management system as it increases the safety of clients and staff.
Conclusion
Non-compliance with administrative, legal, regulatory, and professional standards affects the quality of treatment, patient care, and health. Medical organizations that are constantly accredited have better patient survival and faster recovery rates (Lam et al., 2018). This is since the medical staff is well trained, continually monitors the state of the hospital, and has a culture of striving for excellence. Furthermore, these hospitals have better systems to protect sensitive patient information, making them more attractive to the public. Malleability to the standards is hard work that may seem redundant at first, but it benefits clients, healthcare workers, and healthcare facilities simultaneously.
References
Chiruvella, V., & Guddati, A. K. (2021). Ethical Issues in Patient Data Ownership. Interactive Journal of Medical research, 10(2), e22269.
George, J., & Bhila, T. (2019). Security, confidentiality and privacy in health of healthcare data. Int. J. Trend Sci. Res. Develop, 3(4), 373-377.
Lam, M. B., Figueroa, J. F., Feyman, Y., Reimold, K. E., Orav, E. J., & Jha, A. K. (2018). Association between patient outcomes and accreditation in US hospitals: Observational study. Bmj, 363.
Meshkov, D., Bezmelnitsyna, L., & Cherkasov, S. (2020). A Data Management Model for Proactive Risk Management in Healthcare. Advances in Systems Science and Applications, 20(1), 114-118. Web.
Moore, W., & Frye, S. (2019). Review of HIPAA, part 1: history, protected health information, and privacy and security rules. Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology, 47(4), 269-272.
Noroozi, M., Zahedi, L., Bathaei, F. S., & Salari, P. (2018). Challenges of confidentiality in clinical settings: compilation of an ethical guideline. Iranian Journal of Public Health, 47(6), 875.
Price, W. N., & Cohen, I. G. (2019). Privacy in the age of medical big data. Nature Medicine, 25(1), 37-43.