NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 1 Community Resources and Best Practices

NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 1 Community Resources and Best Practices

Student Name

Capella University

NURS-FPX 6616 Ethical and Legal Considerations in Care Coordination

Prof. Name

Date

Slide 1:

Hello healthcare Leaders, I am Student Name, and today I am presenting a very critical topic relating to Community resources and best practices for a carefully coordinated healthcare system and care management. 

Slide 2: Agenda 

Community Resources and Best Practices

Care coordination and care management are interchangeable terms with slightly different meanings. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has created ease for recording and maintaining healthcare records. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) states care coordination is activities designed deliberately and communication involving all participants so safer and effective care is provided, while care management is an episodic evaluation with a good team that makes the managing medical system effective (Dealtry, 2022).

However, care coordination and management are in crisis despite technological integration such as Electronic Health Records (EHR), wearable devices, Telehealth, and mobile services. Every technology has its drawbacks, and in care coordination management, it creates ethical and legal issues for stakeholders. The data breach is one of the biggest concerns, whether internal, like disclosure and loss/theft, or external, like hacking. Healthcare is most vulnerable to data breaching incidents, and the USA is the biggest victim. The last four years have given more than 90% security breaches in US hospitals. The medical records are sold on black websites for hundreds and thousands of dollars. For the US alone, in 2019, the average cost of a record breach was $15 million (Seh et al., 2020).

Slide 3: Scenario

This is an incident of the healthcare organization under the name ARcare. They had a data breach incident between the last 2 months of 2022. However, they were exposed to the data breach incident in the first month of 2023. The type of attack showed that it was a ransom ware attack, which means the cybercriminal demanded a huge amount of money in exchange for the data of 345,000 patients. The information was extremely crucial because it contained the patient’s IDs, financial accounts, and insurance information. The problem was that despite the payment of ransom money, data restoration still needed to be confirmed. This incident was so critical that ARcare prioritized care coordination management to enhance cyber security. 

Slide 4:

Ethical Issues about Use of Health Care Information Systems for Care Coordination

American Public Health Association (APHA) believes in healthcare services within a community by following ethical principles. Telehealth and Health services have helped to access care services from afar with holistic care coordinating approach. Electronic medical records have a vast range of information, including physical, psychosocial, and personal non-medical information, so it’s well communicated among all healthcare professionals and between patient-provider. The ethical principles related to the use of healthcare information system brings some ethical issues. The general ethical principle for care coordination includes autonomy, the independent decision of the patient, beneficence; providing services that benefit the patient, non-maleficence; protection from harm of all kinds, and justice. Access to care services with all available resources without discrimination (WritersBay, 2021). The ethical issues are security, privacy, and confidentiality, which can harm patients and organizations adversely.

NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 1 Community Resources and Best Practices

The patient-centered approach of the healthcare system today is different from the past disease-based approach. The Internet of Medical Things or Electronic Health Records has made it extremely easy for healthcare professionals and patients to communicate with each other better. It is easy to keep the information distinct and easily available for effective healthcare, however sensitive and important information is part of the system for instance, the address of the house, disease, allergies, information about the bank card, contact number, insurance, and fears mentioned. The breached data can be used to harm the patient financially, psychologically, or physically. Similarly, organizations suffer from financial and reputational issues after a data breach. This usually happens because the data is separate from an organization. Due to this, the beneficiary and autonomy principle of ethics is compromised, the data breached harmed, and secondly, it was without consent (Layman, 2020).                  

Slide 5:         

Legal Issues of Current Practices and Potential Changes          

The legal issues about misuse of healthcare information are patients’ security and organizational financial and reputational loss. The reach of data leads to data misuse, which can be extremely bad for patients and healthcare organizations. Multiple bodies have set laws and regulations for keeping the security check on information technology. For instance, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act promotes secure health technology integration, and The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) strengthens the privacy concerns related to information sharing in an organization. 

Potential Changes Recommended

WHO has recommended some areas to be considered for changing the Health Information System (HIS) (Legal and Ethical Issues in Health Informatics, 2020).

• It is important that HIS collaborates well between healthcare sectors, departments, and information technology to improve healthcare information governance.
• Usually, the data breach is because of low investment in technology security and training, so investment in data management is essential for avoiding legal repercussions.
• All stakeholders should be on one page. The patients, healthcare team, nurses, organizational leaders, and states should align with the health information system security agenda. 
• Information and communication technology are extremely important for better access to information, so innovative technology must be considered to update the system timely. 
• Applications and systems should be strengthened to reuse them by setting common standards, guidelines, and solutions to data management or analysis.
• The data should be used to avoid possible harm by reporting it and communicating information to improve healthcare services.
• Lastly, accountability by states and national oversights can help track the progress or lack of reliable health information systems, for instance, HIPPA and its legal notice for warning data breach incidents. 

Slide 6: 

Comparison of Current Outcomes with Best Practices

Weak security, no integration of multi-authentication processes for access to information, and lower investment in Health Information Systems lead to loss, theft, and misuse of the information. Two situations occur: data leveraging and long-term identity theft (Steger et al., 2019). This brings problems like financial and lifetime losses in the form of ransom, blackmailing, and death. The illegitimate use of information has serious repercussions that may not be restored or rebuilt. The reason for data reach is handling IT information in the hands of physicians and not collaborating with professional and non-professional staff members to keep the information private and secure. 

NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 1 Community Resources and Best Practices

Strengthening the medical information systems, teamwork, collaboration, and education to patients along with training and development of the healthcare team are objectives of the real-time strategies. The best practices involve constant improvement by involving IT professionals, patients, physicians, and nurses even. The best practices also involve training and educational sessions for healthcare professionals so they know the current possible misuse practices. The training and education include internal and external factors that affect the health information system. 

Slide 7: 

Evidence-Based Practices 

Some of the evidence-based best practices have been taught for keeping the record safe. Telemedicine, Telehealth, and wearable devices have created ease for patients and healthcare professionals, so abandoning those practices is not the solution to the problem. The evidence-based interventions consist of system strengthening through Multi-factor Authentication, team collaboration through API, education, and training for patients and healthcare staff. Multi-factor Authentication enables the team to give two to three identity confirmation factors to enable the health information system. This will make the criminals or ill-intended persons unable to access or at least difficult to access information.

Organizations integrate health information technology through the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) or Electronic Health Records (HER), but they need to develop a team that can handle the information critically. Physicians are astute in medical knowledge, but organizations need to develop an IT team by integrating an API system (Steger et al., 2019). Patients should also be educated to share important information, like it is unnecessary to provide social security number. 

Slide 8: 

Role of Stakeholders in Intervention

Stakeholders are people who are affected by what is happening in the organization. The role of stakeholders in a health information system is to improve the activities that influence policies that secure the organization’s information system. There are four major stakeholders patients; whose information is at stake, providers; the organization that is responsible for keeping the information secure, payors; who support the system by financially taking part in it and policymakers; who are responsible for setting the rules and regulations of the organization (Lübbeke et al., 2019)

The patients control data breach adverse repercussions by providing non-critical information only. They are educated enough to decide what information is sensitive and what is not. The providers are at risk of reputation, finances, and career damage, so they intervene by working collaboratively and involving all system members. It is good for participants to know a little about everything in the system. The payor interferes in an incentive manner. They influence and motivate the participants to integrate a secure system. Lastly, policymakers are most important in health information management. They rely on sound, evidence-based real-time information to find the problem, compare the solutions and implement educational and training policies in an organization. They judge and modify the intervention for better outcomes. 

Slide 9:

Explanation of Data-Driven Outcomes

Data-driven decision-making (DDDM) helps healthcare organizations enhance security and improve the system to benefit all stakeholders. Data-driven, evidence-based decisions are reliable, agile, transparent, and effective (Chauhan et al., 2021). For cyber security, artificial intelligence and machine learning are crucial tools. Note the following points of data-driven measures:

• It gives information in time on potential cyber threats hence provided time for system testing for threat anticipation and saving from a data breach incident.
• The practices also assisted in security architecture that helps strengthen the hardware and software architecture. 
• The data-driven created security incident report mechanism through collaborative teamwork.
• AI in security enables visualization and analysis in less time, which helps address threats before it is too late.   

Slide 10:

Practices to Sustain Outcomes

The positive outcomes of the interventions must be sustained for long-term growth. To do so, involve all stakeholders in the intervention, enabling all participants to maintain the necessary security measures at all levels. The executives will take the lead and ensure that all stakeholders are equally involved and interventions are not redundant after some time. The threats are found before the damage is done to keep one step ahead of the cybercriminals. The measurement of the threat severity, the assessment of financial damage that can occur, and also keeping track of whether the threat is mostly internal or external with the help of AI (Narrasimman, 2023). This will be sustained through the professional IT team. Continuous training and educational sessions will help sustain a secure and reliable information system. State and federal policies that accredit and keep the organizations accountable will make patients select services carefully from healthcare organizations. 

Slide 11:

Conclusion

The adverse situation of the healthcare information system has incurred financial and personal losses to patients and organizations, and the USA is the biggest victim. It is due to the utilization of information technology. The ethical concerns of this weak system include autonomous and beneficiary principles of ethics along with non-maleficence and justice principles. The legal consequences of a weak information technology system include reputation damage and suing from different stakeholders. Professional licenses can be demolished for losing valuable health data. The legal changes recommended include strengthening the system and collaboration along with training and education. Evidence-based studies support the mentioned recommendation. Stakeholders are crucial, especially policymakers who utilize data-driven decision-making. To sustain positive practices, senior executives should take the lead so AI can assist the IT team in better system management. Only strengthening the system and team will enable reduced data breach events. 

References

Chauhan, H., U. S., S., & Singh, S. K. (2021). Health information and its crucial role in policy formulation and implementation. Journal of Health Management, 23(1), 54–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0972063421994957 

Dealtry, N. (2022, June 3). Care Coordination vs Care Management | Elation Health EHR. Www.elationhealth.com. https://www.elationhealth.com/blog/independent-primary-care-blog/care-coordination-v-care-management/ 

Layman, E. J. (2020). Ethical issues and the electronic health record. The Health Care Manager, 39(4), 150–161. https://doi.org/10.1097/hcm.0000000000000302 

Legal and Ethical Issues in Health Informatics. (2020, April 10). USF Health Online. https://www.usfhealthonline.com/resources/health-informatics/legal-and-ethical-issues-in-health-informatics/ 

Lübbeke, A., Carr, A. J., & Hoffmeyer, P. (2019). Registry stakeholders. EFORT Open Reviews, 4(6), 330–336. https://doi.org/10.1302/2058-5241.4.180077 

NURS FPX 6616 Assessment 1 Community Resources and Best Practices

Narrasimman, P. (2023, January 24). Cyber Security in Healthcare: Importance and Use Cases. Www.knowledgehut.com. https://www.knowledgehut.com/blog/security/cyber-security-in-healthcare 

Seh, A. H., Zarour, M., Alenezi, M., Sarkar, A. K., Agrawal, A., Kumar, R., & Khan, R. A. (2020). Healthcare data breaches: Insights and implications. Healthcare, 8(2), 133. NCBI. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8020133 

Steger, rew, company, rew is the web editor for H. magazine H. experience includes marketing for a major I. services, & WashingtonExec, digital strategy for. (2019, October 30). What Happens to Stolen Healthcare Data? Technology solutions that drive healthcare. https://healthtechmagazine.net/article/2019/10/what-happens-stolen-healthcare-data-perfcon 

WritersBay, U. (2021, November 17). Ethical And Policy Issues about Care Coordination. Uniquewritersbay.com. https://uniquewritersbay.com/ethical-and-policy-issues-about-care-coordination/