Case Study: Information Security Issue
Macro-view of the Problem
The hospital faces a problem of end-user security: sensitive data is vulnerable to exposure in the workplace as the end-user methods of using computers in the hospital are ineffective to safeguard the data from theft. Personal health records are important for patients, but if privacy of data cannot be guaranteed, these records are more of a risk to personal privacy than a benefit with regards to having access to information. Nurses, on the other hand, require access to health information and they often need it quickly because of the amount of work they have to deal with routinely on their shift. While end-user security should be a top priority among nurses using facility computers and databases, it routinely is not—as Koppel, Smith, Blythe and Kothari (2015) point out: “a significant gap exists between cybersecurity as taught by textbooks and experts, and cybersecurity as practiced by actual end users” (p. 215). This gap is evidence that in the real world of health care, nurses and care providers are less concerned about systems security than they are about providing timely quality care to patients and quick access to information. Ideally, they would be concerned about both—but the real world often falls short of the ideal.
Conaty-Buck (2017) notes that “all healthcare employees should learn about cybersecurity risks and work to protect patient privacy and safety” (p. 62)—and that education should take place at school and carry over into the facilities where nurses work. In this case, both nursing department and the systems themselves need to be addressed. The nurses and care professionals (even the physicians) need re-education on what it means to safely use information systems and why it is important to follow the guidelines. The systems,...
References
Conaty-Buck, S. (2017). Cybersecurity and healthcare records. American Nurse Today, 12(9), 62.
Daitch, H. (2017). 2017 data breaches—the worst so far. Retrieved from https://www.identityforce.com/blog/2017-data-breaches
HIPAA. (2016). Basics for providers. Retrieved from https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNProducts/Downloads/HIPAAPrivacyandSecurityTextOnly.pdf
Kim, L. (2018). Cybersecurity matters. Nursing Management, 49(2), 16-22.
Koppel, R., Smith, S. W., Blythe, J., & Kothari, V. (2015). Workarounds to computer access in healthcare organizations: you want my password or a dead patient?. In ITCH (pp. 215-220).
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