Proper Use of Social Media in Health Care

Posted: August 27th, 2021

Proper Use of Social Media in Health Care

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Proper Use of Social Media in Health Care

Technology has had a significant impact on healthcare operations. Still,  health practitioners require additional insight into how innovative ideas and techniques work to avoid blunders that may affect their performance. Nurses need to be familiar with HIPAA rules that offer valuable direction on how to defend protected health information (PHI). The information is essential to ensure privacy, security, and confidentiality when using social media. Failure to be conversant with relevant regulations could result in undesirable outcomes that affect individual and organizational outcomes.

Describing PHI

Under HIPAA, PHI is any data or information in a medical record that can be utilized to identify a client or patient and that is formed, utilized, or disclosed in the process of offering care, such as conducting a diagnosis or treatment. Examples of PHI that health workers interact with daily include patient names, dates, email addresses, fax and telephone numbers, and addresses, such as zip code, county, and city (HIPAA Journal, 2021). Other types of PHI include demographic statistics, such as culture, sex, date of birth, lab outcomes, medication, and ID numbers. HIPAA further describes PHI as independently identifiable information about the past, present, and future health condition of a patient formed, gathered, relayed, or managed by a HIPAA-certified entity in connection to the provision of health services or payment for healthcare (HIPAA Journal, 2021). Nurses must safeguard PHI all the time, including when using social media.

Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality

Privacy, security, and confidentiality are major concerns in health care that emerge with the use of technology. Privacy is the connection between the gathering and transmission of data in a way that does not infringe on political and legal issues surrounding the use of such information (George & Bhila, 2019). Security means enacting measures, tools, and resources to safeguard sensitive data and information. Confidentiality is about safeguarding data against unauthorized, illegal, or unintentional reach, use, or transmission of data (George & Bhila, 2019). Adequate protection of delicate electronic health information requires interdisciplinary collaboration to achieve the most appropriate outcome. The engagement provides a chance to learn from different professionals how to protect data effectively (George & Bhila, 2019). More fundamentally, collaborations offer a chance to identify flaws that could expose data to the wrong hands.

Evidence relating to Social Media Use and PHI

Interprofessional team members need to be conversant with some evidence concerning social media use that may increase their attention to the formalities guiding the use of such technology in health care. A vital piece of information that practitioners must understand is that they may lose their job for not observing HIPPAA regulations on social media use. Information by HIPAA Journal (2018) reveals how a nurse at a health facility in Texas focusing on pediatrics care lost her work for contravening HIPAA regulations. The journal further informs how hundreds of other nurses across the state and the country lose their position for not observing the regulations (HIPAA Journal, 2018). Health care organizations place burdensome regulations against interdisciplinary team members who contravene social media regulations. Such members either lose their position or their job. Organizations that violate rules on social media use are at risk of paying huge fines, which have compelled many organizations to establish a range of measures to avert possible confidentiality, privacy, and security violations (HIPAA Journal, 2018). Institutions train their personnel and equip them with information about various legislations influencing social media use.

References

George, J., & Bhila, T. (2019). Security, confidentiality and privacy in health of healthcare data. International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, 3 (4), 373-377. https://doi.org/10.31142/ijtsrd23780

HIPAA Journal. (2018). Texas nurse fired for social media HIPAA violation. https://www.hipaajournal.com/texas-nurse-fired-for-social-media-hipaa-violation/

HIPAA Journal. (2021). What is considered protected health information under HIPAA? https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-is-considered-protected-health-information-under-hipaa/