Managing Access and Disclosure of Healthcare Information in an Organization

As the HIM Director of an acute care hospital you are charged with the responsibility of maintaining the hospital-wide confidentiality policies and procedures and managing the access and disclosure of healthcare information. You review federal and state guidelines as well as other examples of access and disclosure policies from other organizations for benchmarking purposes.

Review the two guidelines below
 
1. HIPAA Privacy Rules Summary from HHS (attached) http://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-regulations/index.html

2. The AHIMA Notice of Privacy Practices AHIMA Practice Brief (attached) http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_048808.hcsp?dDocName=bok1_048808

After reviewing the guidelines, use the sample policies on patient confidentiality, disclosure and access you have obtained from Columbia University Medical Center at the link below

Sample Notice_of_Privacy_Practices_Policy Columbia University (attached) https://content.learntoday.info/HI460_Summer_14/site/Media/Sample%20Notice_of_Privacy_Practices_Policy%20Columbia%20University.pdf

To benchmark if the Columbia University Medical Center policies meet the required HIPAA guidelines. Create a table that highlight the key guidelines and identifies if the Columbia University Medical Center policies include the appropriate section and wording. Recommend revisions to the policies if needed Based on those recommendations write a policy for your organization using the Columbia University Medical Center policies as the template.

Once your policy is written, consider the following types of requests for information that have been problematic for your organization based on your review of the ROI Disclosure Logs and assess and support that your revised policy will allow your ROI staff to have sufficient guidance to respond to the request or indicate what further revisions need to be considered. Use the table summarize your findings.