Importance of Patient Confidentiality

Protecting patient information is a prerequisite to building provider-patient trust and ensuring HIPAA compliance. According to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), it is mandatory to protect patient health information. In addition, respecting the privacy of patient information is a fundamental aspect of providing healthcare services. Patient confidentiality helps healthcare entities to avoid HIPAA violations, leading to hefty penalties. Keeping the patient’s information safe helps to maintain an effective revenue cycle management process. Further, healthcare facilities of all types must implement policies to protect the privacy of patient data. In the same way, confidential information cannot be shared without patients’ consent.

What is Patient Confidentiality?

Covered entities like providers and payers need to secure the private healthcare data of a specific patient. Similarly, creating and maintaining a system to protect patient healthcare information is essential for all covered entities. Health information like name, address, phone number, email address, date of birth, and gender that can identify an individual is called protected health information.

Understanding Patient Confidentiality

Various factors help us understand the importance of keeping patient data confidential. Similarly, privacy and confidentiality have been recognized as mandatory elements of the relationship between providers, patients, pharmacies, and other healthcare professionals. In addition, optimal patient care depends on complete and accurate medical records. Further, managed healthcare systems should give timely access to complex patient information across healthcare entities. So, it is essential to keep patient data private and secure.
Several technologies in the healthcare industry improve the patient care paradigm. Likewise, they result in the sharing of patient information between entities, which is essential to preserving patients’ right to privacy. Thus, there is a need to limit access to medical and pharmacy information.

Adhering to the HIPAA Rules

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ensures patient confidentiality across covered entities. Using protected health information (PHI) relates to treatment, payment, or operations (TPO) activities. In the same way, HIPAA requires that only a minimum amount of protected health information is disclosed while performing TPO activities. Furthermore, HIPAA ensures the responsible use of protected health information to improve the effectiveness of patient care.

Maintaining Trust in Provider-Patient Relationship

The patient-provider relationship stands on a solid foundation of trust. Similarly, patients’ trust lies in the medical competency of the healthcare provider. In addition, trust lies in the security of health information, where patients believe their information is safe with the provider. Healthcare practitioners’ commitment to keeping patient data confidential builds trust-based relationships. As a result, it increases patient satisfaction and allows patients to share their health conditions completely. So, it leads to an accurate diagnosis, and providers create customized patient treatment plans.

When Can Information Be Shared?

Under the HIPAA rules, it is essential to maintain patient confidentiality at all times. However, protected health information (PHI) can be shared in the following scenarios:

When healthcare providers need to share patient information with other providers for diagnosis and treatment.
When there is a need to share information with the laboratory and imaging test labs.
Sharing the lab test results and discussing patient health conditions while sharing samples to perform more diagnostic tests.
When a patient is referred to another healthcare facility for diagnosis and treatment.

Final Thoughts

Under the fundamental right to privacy, keeping patient information secure is mandatory. Similarly, HIPAA rules define how and when patient information is shared across healthcare entities. Maintaining patient confidentiality as a provider helps avoid penalties. Further, hiring companies for revenue cycle management allows providers to work with HIPAA-certified professionals. As a result, the protected health information is secure, which results in effective care delivery.