Reference no: EM13934147

Outline the key issues in keeping accurate confidential patient records

In the healthcare industry, the information regarding a patient is considered to be very sensitive and important. The leakage of such sensitive information of the patient may even damage the status and reputation of the medical institution and the involved medical professionals. The information of the patients include a number of medical information such as the history of diseases and the current diseases, the operations undergone, the effect of the various medications consumed in the past etc[B1] . The patient information also includes a number of personal information of the patient such as age, marital status, family's name, address etc[B2] . All of this information has to keep safe and secure by the various medical institutes to ensure no negative activity against the patients or the medical institution. There are several issues involved in the activities of keeping the patients records confidential and accurate (Beech, 2007).

The patient information should be clear, concise and straightforward which allows the medical professionals to interpret them accurately. The biggest and most common issue in keeping the patient information accurate is the deployment of the efficient strategy of updating the information at regular intervals and with extreme precision. Another issue in keeping the patient information accurate is the risk of the information getting updated and accesses by multiple sources simultaneously. The medical professionals should ensure that the patient information is being updated depending on the particular version of the information and not being updated by multiple parties simultaneously. Another issue in keeping the patient information accurate is the mode of receipt of the patient information. If the mode in which patient information is stored and managed is not efficient, then the information regarding the various patients of the medical institute is compromised in terms of its integrity (Alpert, 1998).

The patient information stored and managed by the medical institutions should be kept strictly confidential which faces a number of issues. The communication with the various people coming into the medical institute or calling should be monitored properly to ensure that the medical professionals don't reveal any of the sensitive information to any of the unauthorised people (Beech, 2007). The most important and dangerous issue in keeping patient information confidential is the situation in which someone's safety and health is on the line. In such scenarios, the medical professionals working in the medical institution may have to disclose the information, which in turn damages the confidentiality of the patient information. Another issue in the confidentiality management of the patient information in the healthcare organisation is the effect of some legal activities and regulations, which require the medical institution to provide some of the confidential patient information to the law for some legal activities. This leads to the breach in the confidentiality of the patient information managed by the medical institution. Some of the situation in various activities of the healthcare industry pose ethical dilemma in front of the medical professionals. The medical professionals may give up some of the confidential patient information as the ethical thing to do and cause a breach in the confidentiality of the patient information (Rind, 1997).