You are the director of health information services in a major medical center that maintains both a psychiatric unit and a substance abuse unit in addition to general medical and surgical units. Your facility plans to join a computer network with fifteen hospitals throughout the state, which will allow online access to laboratory data, regardless of which facility performed the lab work. None of the other fifteen facilities offer psychiatric or substance abuse treatment.
Identify and discuss the confidentiality issues present with such a network in the light of the statutory, regulatory, and accrediting requirements governing patients treated in these units.