Case study: You are the newly appointed advanced nurse to a large children's hospital specialty clinic and oversee all nurse practitioners in the clinics. Your Chief Executive orients you to the various clinics and states.
"We need you to be aware we have a real issue with the way our clinicians are using the EHR, waiting until the end of the shift to document the clinical care. We think they might be carrying paper around in their pockets, may be even taking it home with them to document in the evening. They could even be violating HIPAA. Can you make this a priority for your first few weeks in the clinics to investigate?"
As a result of this conversation during orientation, you realize one of your first tasks is to fully review the federally posted Security Risk Assessment (SRA) on HealthlT.gov and encourage your clinic leadership to join you in implementing a full risk assessment. You determine that there have been breaches in several clinics with PHI data.
Q1. What is your first course of action?
Q2. Are you required to report the breaches?
Q3. How will you handle communication and improvement strategies within the clinic?
Q4. Identify another clinical environment in which PHI or personal identifiers might be vulnerable to exposure.