Research has shown that it is possible to protect patient privacy through a number of ways which involves punishment of individuals caught going against the privacy rules. Among protection measures that should be taken into consideration include marketing restrictions. The law prohibits disclosure of information regarding patients for marketing, where patients are not aware. However, it includes a few exceptions that allow provision of some health data to specific data parties that later use it in patient education and research on health products.
Consumer groups are involved in support efforts that try to clarify what marketing really entails in order to protect health information provided by patients from being illegally sold. Another means used in the protection of patient’s privacy is notifying patients in case their information is breached. This will help patients keep track safety of their information and to ensure that justice prevails in case breaching occurs. Audit trail will be put in place and it will also necessitate tracking of patient’s information.
This mandate will require consumer groups to be provided with expanded accounting in order for patients to be able to learn the current state of information provided to doctors. This particular protection requirement will be very strict and it will also be difficult for a large number of health providers to comply with it. (Carter, 2008) On the other hand, patients will largely benefit from the trail because they will be in a position to undertake tracking efficiently; tracking provides a high level of transparency on patient’s information security status.
These technological innovations are capable of benefiting the consumers or patients greatly; however, this will be achieved in cases where they are assured of high level of confidentiality. In order to practically address confidentiality issue, the health department will be funded by stimulus package to research on the requirements of breach notification, potential privacy as well as level of security as executed by health providers. This research will be undertaken in the year two thousand and ten which will have given Americans enough time to familiarize themselves with rules concerning patient privacy and its level of applicability.
(Rodrigues, 2001) Another protection measure that needs to be implemented in order to ensure patient privacy is maintained is penalization of individuals who are caught disclosing patients’ information as well as those asking for it. This is because some health providers create profiles in which patients’ information is clearly presented and they offer these profiles to institutions including insurance companies that later use it for underwriting.
Penalization will be used as a means to strengthen patient privacy enforcement since unauthorized entities will be discouraged to tamper with patients’ confidential information. Protection measures supported by stimulus package also ensures that those entities that were not considered during formulation of privacy rules by the federal government follow the currently available privacy rules executed by health providers. Also, those entities representing insurers as well as health providers are also expected to conform to the same rules in order to ensure uniformity; making it easy to track those going against these rules.
State attorneys should be given the mandate to enforce legislation concerning information disclosure and punishment of responsible parties. Patients should also be allowed to act accordingly in case they find their information disclosed as long as their actions will be in accordance with law. A more lenient measure will also be used to ensure protection of patients’ information where doctors who will adhere to privacy rules will be rewarded.