Imagine: doctors everywhere using cellphones.
Better yet, imagine doctors using cellphones to help care for patients.
It's a beautiful thing, really: efficient, timely, graphical. Doctors, like most people, love the convenience and utility of their smartphones.
But doctors aren't like normal people. We are carefully regulated. We must abide by health care privacy rules and so, too, must the hospitals where we work. So communications about work, be it text messaging, e-mail, SMS messaging - all must be HIPAA compliant.
But an interesting collision of doctor's privacy rights and patient's privacy rights can occur in our new world of mobile health care computing, thanks to a kill switch present inside Apple's iPhone and cloud computing, especially if doctors were to use an EMR app on their cell phone.
Doctors are well advised to understand how their personal smartphone and its information could be affected by corporate and patient security concerns.
Bzzzzaaaap.
Caveat emptor. Not only might your work place data disappear, but also your personal data, too.
-Wes
I once received a fax from a doctor's office (not my doctor) who obviously sent the fax to the wrong number. It was results of an STD test sent to my home. I don't know the person whose test it was. Fortunately for the person whose tests results it was for, I simply shredded the fax (as opposed to tossing it in the trash) and called the doctor's office to tell them they sent it to the wrong number.
ReplyDeleteI am going to assume that was a HUGE HIPPA violation.
This was a below the HIP PA violation
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