A1

HIPAA effect on the use of telephones in the medical office
Name:
Course:
Professor:
Institution:
HIPAA effect on the use of telephones in the medical office
The HIPAA regulations sought to protect the medical information of patients in the USA. The legislation regulates the communication of the health care providers. For example, it limits the use of telephone conversations with the patients. The developers of the bill felt that the use of telephones risks the privacy of patient data. Experts have shown that SIM cards and the “onboard memory” in the computer stores the records of the conversations (Karasz, Eiden, & Bogan, 2013). Therefore, the use of telephones facilitates the storage of client information without consent.
Secondly, the rising cases of data breaches indicate that the use of telephones exposes the patient data to criminals and other individuals. Mobiles phones lack the appropriate encryptions that can deter such parties from accessing the records. Besides, hackers have grown sophisticated and can hack the telephone service networks and obtain whatever information they can find (Klein, 2011). Some of the data collected may cause harm to the clients and thus the HIPAA rules to aim to limit the occurrence of such incidences and increase the patient’s confidence in the healthcare system.
Thirdly, the regulations require the physicians to obtain consent from the patients. Further, they even stipulate the maximum number of words in texts messages. Many medical workers would view the provision as a form of bureaucracy (Karasz, Eiden, & Bogan, 2013).

It would take a lot of time trying to obtain the required permission, and hence most practitioners would rather avoid telephone conversations.
Lastly, the portability of the devices makes them vulnerable to theft. Many individuals lose their mobile phones every year. For example, statistics obtained from 600 hospitals in the USA reveal that sixty-six percent of the reported data breach occurred due to cellphone theft. The survey included various members of the health care system such as health insurers, doctors and hospital executives (Martínez-Pérez, De La Torre-Díez, & López-Coronado, 2015). Therefore, medical employees avoid telephone communications to evade liability.
References
Karasz, H. N., Eiden, A., & Bogan, S. (2013). Text messaging to communicate with public health audiences: how the HIPAA Security Rule affects practice. American journal of public health, 103(4), 617-622.
Klein, C. A. (2011). Cloudy confidentiality: clinical and legal implications of cloud computing in health care. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 39(4), 571-578.
Martínez-Pérez, B., De La Torre-Díez, I., & López-Coronado, M. (2015). Privacy and security in mobile health apps: a review and recommendations. Journal of medical systems, 39(1), 181.