Assignment 1: Discussion-The Impact of Privacy Laws on Public Health Informatics
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Healthcare reform) contains a section (1561) on healthcare IT standards adoption in the United States. Most of these standards impact public health as they are baseline interoperability standards used in either the National Health Information Network or local Regional Health Information Organizations or Health Information Exchanges.
Based on your readings for the module, respond to the following:
– Why do privacy laws differ with regard to the release and use of health information in public health practice as opposed to public health informatics in the clinical setting?
– Support your position with scholarly references.
Write your response in a minimum of 300-400 words, providing relevant references. Apply APA standards to citation of sources.
Assignment 2: LASA-Issues in Establishing RHIOs
This assignment facilitates comprehensive knowledge transfer in regard to the components, infrastructure, and functionality of the regional health information organization (RHIO).
Scenario:
You have been hired as the director of public health informatics for the Centervale County Department of Public Health because you have valuable knowledge about the functionality and functioning of RHIOs. This is what you have learned about Centervale’s plans:
– The Centervale County department of public health plans to deploy a county-wide RHIO.
– The department requires healthcare establishments and practitioners in the county to migrate from a paper-based health records system to an electronic medical records (EMR) system within the next five years.
– The department also requires all practitioners to connect to the county Health Information Exchange set up by the RHIO within the next five years.
Directions:
Your primary responsibility is to propose policies and mandates that ensure maintenance of confidentiality and privacy of protected health information. Keeping that in mind, prepare a 10-12-slide PowerPoint presentation for the Centervale County Department of Public Health officials that includes the following:
1. Discuss the challenges of privacy and confidentiality within the history and evolution of public health informatics.
a. What opportunities will the migration to an EHR and the implementation of a RHIO provide to address these challenges?
2. Address the following issues with establishing a county-wide RHIO:
a. Identify and discuss the privacy concerns about the collection and distribution of health information across the RHIO.
b. Describe the access rights of individuals and any groups to the data collected and stored by the RHIO.
c. Identify and explain interoperability standards deployed by the RHIO.
3. Propose a list of policies and mandates that would ensure maintenance of confidentiality and privacy of protected health information as mentioned in the above issues.
4. Evaluate and identify the best tools or system of public health informatics to manage the county’s public health information and explain how that tool or system will uphold privacy.
a. Give examples of how key public health information systems in the United States use these policies and mandates to guarantee the security, confidentiality, and accessibility of the data they contain.
b. Describe some of the search tools available to locate and analyze public health data.
5. Examine how the policies, mandates, tools, and standards that have evolved in the development of RHIOs might contribute to a global strategy for use of information technology (IT) in healthcare to reduce health inequity.
Use the PowerPoint Notes pane on each slide to explain your discussion points as if you were actually presenting this information to a group.
Include citations of appropriate laws and regulations to justify your positions.
Include a reference slide in APA style.
Make sure you write in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; display accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
