The privacy of medical records is an essential component of the workers' compensation system. As the use of electronic records becomes more commonplace the need to maintain the records in a secure format becomes increasingly critical. Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com By David Do, MD
While I don’t condone the storage of patient information on unapproved services like Gmail or Google Drive, this incident pretty much highlights the sorry state of information systems within the hospital and the unfulfilled need by physicians for tools that facilitate workflow and patient care.
It says something that the Oregon residents felt compelled to take such a drastic action. I don’t know what punishment – if any – those responsible were given by administrators for their “crimes.” I’ll leave it to readers to make up their own minds about the wisdom of the unauthorized workaround and the appropriateness of any punishment. But I do know that the message the incident sends is a very clear one.
We’re screwing this up. There is really no earthly reason why it should be any more difficult to share a patient record than it is to share a Word doc, a Powerpoint or yes, even a cloud-based Google Drive spreadsheet.
Why the Breach Happened
What’s going on here? Let’s say I admit a patient to the hospital. Our friend was hospitalized here just last month, and like many patients, he has dementia...
