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Access Control In Healthcare

Decent Essays

(1) The importance of access controls in addition to audit controls.

Understanding the importance of access controls and audit controls are two of the main steps for implementing a successful compliance plan within all healthcare organizations. Three of the important steps in addressing ways to maintain and utilize the access controls are authentication, authorization, and audit (Gelzer, Acker, & Schneider, 2008). Authentication is used differently within the healthcare organization on how they create the access to all credentialed users to the data in a patient’s PHI. Authorization is assigned to all the users on when and how they are allowed to access specific data within a patient’s PHI. Lastly, it is the process of an audit trail that …show more content…

According to the article, “Developing Emergency Access Standards” it explains how organizations need to concurrently review the access controls to the health record. Therefore, all organizations need to implement an emergency access procedures to approach situations that could help access data in events that require emergency situation. For example Gelzer, Acker, and Schneider state what an “emergency access procedures” is by:
The system shall provide the ability for specified users to override the access control rules and request access to health information (“break the glass” functionality), record the reason for access and provide an administrative report.

As we have learned the term “break the glass” in class, I feel that it is important to understand when and how to approach a situation when this type of access is acceptable. For example, a patient that is presented in the ED may need to have their personal health information accessed without authorization by the patient. This may be due to the condition of the patient presenting to be incompetent to give consent to their PHI. Therefore, all employees need to understand how to handle emergency situations when they are presented. Overall, the delivery of care to the patient and best outcome results are what is an important to providing the best quality of …show more content…

The standard that supports this compliance is known as the Technical Safeguard Standard within the HIPAA security rule. Therefore, the Security Official at the organization has the responsibility to establish policies and procedures in regards to authentication. In this standard, an authentication is needed to be accomplished by requiring employers to provide proof of identity to allow access to PHI within the EHR. As for the form of authentication that is used to implement this standard can be identified by the “Digital signatures” and

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