I read a post by Bob Coffield over at the Health Care Law Blog about issues with mobile devices and the potential for patient privacy issues. The post discusses an incident where hospital employees took pictures of a shark attack victim in the emergency room and emailed them to other people.
Bob goes on to express concern that mobile devices with cameras and social media increase the potential for patient privacy issues.
As such, this incident provides a good example for training and reeducating health care employees on patient privacy issues. Health care employees and professionals must always remember to start from a framework of protecting the health and privacy of their patients. As the use of mobile devices with cameras and social media tools becomes more ingrained in our every day lives — the ability for private information to be captured, transferred and spread in a viral fashion has become much easier. Caution must be used and this case highlights the importance of retraining staff and highlighting the importance of protecting your patient’s privacy.
Hospitals and medical practices have to add cameras, facebook updates, tweets, and other social media to the list of items to address when providing HIPAA privacy education.
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