Dale Miller, director of consulting services for Irongate Inc., a San Rafael, California, firm that teaches organizations how to secure health information, said that new criminal penalties wouldn t apply to individual workers who make honest mistakes. In fact, nurses and allied healthcare workers are often the first employees to voice concerns about ensuring patient privacy, according to Miller. Patients who are worried about information getting out and destroying a personal relationship, undermining insurance coverage, or threatening their employment may talk openly to a nurse. Nurses and other healthcare professionals sometimes worry that their own patient records are being viewed by co-workers. Theoretically, that could happen, Hirsch said.
Hospitals also run random checks of patient files to identify who is accessing whose information.
If an employee s inquiry cannot be justified, that can be grounds for disciplinary action. From her own experiences, Hirsch said that security concerns aren t keeping patients from revealing important health information to providers. The vast majority of healthcare professionals take the confidentiality responsibility very, very seriously. Most patients trust that we will uphold our part of the bargain.