Crucial Ethical and Legal Considerations in Human Services
The key ethical considerations in a health facility entail preserving a patient’s confidentiality and safeguarding an individual’s right to privacy. These considerations are significant because, in the relationship between a health professional/health services practitioner and a patient, the latter is in a vulnerable state whereby he/she has to provide his/her otherwise private information. For this reason, it is ethically feasible for workers in hospitals to maintain the confidentiality of their patients.
The regulations relevant to the divulgence of a patient’s health records and other confidential information to a court entail the pronouncements under title 42 of the CFR and HIPAA privacy guidelines. In the spirit of protecting patients’ discreetness, HIPAA privacy rules stipulate that a client’s health records can only be served to a court under the express authorization of a court order or a subpoena (Davis, 2019). Even under these conditions, HIPAA privacy regulations stipulate that the provided information should be limited to what is authorized.
In consideration of the punitive nature of lawsuits linked with unauthorized exposure of patients’ health records, human services agencies can mitigate such cases by establishing policies for educating their staff on privacy guidelines. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (n.d.), there is no single standardized framework for training HIPAA regulations, thus allowing human services agencies the flexibility to develop educational programs that suit their workforce. In addition, in the preparation of divulging an individual’s health records to a court, human services practitioners should establish the authenticity of the court order and type of data requested in the judicial process (Davis, 2019). Moreover, human services workers should ensure that the uncovering of a patient’s health data complies with relevant federal and state statutes. These considerations will prevent the unauthorized provision of a client’s health records.
References
Davis, N. A. (2019). Foundations of health information management – e-book. St. Louis, MI: Elsevier Health Sciences.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (n.d.). Training materials. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/training/index.html