Module 09 Written Assignment – Celebrity Health Information-Requirements for Access vs Professional Ethics

Policies and procedures outlining access to patient information for a healthcare organization’s workforce needs to be clearly defined. Although all patients are equally protected by the HIPAA Privacy Rules as well as all applicable federal and state laws and regulations, celebrities seeking and obtaining healthcare, can often be vulnerable to “curious” healthcare workers, inappropriately accessing their health information. Even when there are existing policies unauthorized access can still occur. These can become high profile cases depending on both what the healthcare worker does with regards to disclosure of the information and what the facility does with regards to enforcing its policies and the law.

Research the situation of a workforce unauthorized access to patient records at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles in June 2013, find at least two sources of information.

In a two page paper, using APA format, summarize the issues of the case as you see them, keep in mind that this is not a legal case but a reporting by the hospital and press of what happened and the actions taken.

After you summarize the issue of the case, examine the situation from both the professional ethics perspective of those employees, what professional ethical standards did they violate, and what violation to the HIPAA Privacy Rule regarding access to information by an organization’s workforce occured. Outline additional measure the Cedars Sinai might have been able to take to prevent the unauthorized access.