Reference no: EM132232394

"Nancie Jones has been hired as the practice administrator. Her predecessor left without notice due to a conflict with the managing physician. On her first day of employment, she has been given access codes to the electronic medical record file by the receptionist of the practice. She notes that the system was installed 24 months prior to her hiring and has not been updated since that time. During an orientation meeting with staff, a clerk comes to Nancie with a report that one day before she left, Nancie’s predecessor responded to a call for assistance from the clerk who complained that the system continually froze up on her and that Nancie’s predecessor apparently fixed the problem by inserting a flash drive into the staffers computer and typing some commands. The next day, Nancie is inundated with calls: one from a patient who was referred to psychotherapy who complains he has been denied access to his medical record, another from a patient whose insurance indicated a bill for a procedure the patient claims never took place, another is a report that a scheduled surgery of a patient has to be cancelled due to conflicting information on the patient’s medical history, and another patient reports experiencing harassing phone calls from durable medical equipment providers regarding sexual dysfunction therapy. The final call of the day is from an attorney who demands any and every piece of data ever produced, kept, archived, or sent for destruction concerning his client, a former patient. "

Nancie has identified many issues that should be addressed. Your assignment is to ascertain as many potential privacy, security, identity theft, or other legal issues as you can and then identify what steps the administrator should take to respond to one of these issues.