Health Information
Health information should be accessed on a need-to-know basis. As such, there should be few circumstances that warrant non-clinical healthcare staff to have permission to view this information. In the situations where this is warranted, access should be limited to only that information which is needed to complete the task. For example, personnel in the billing department might have access to diagnostic codes, but not narrative notes. It is recommended that clinics define and standardize their workflow prior to selecting and implementing an EHR (Ozair et al., 2015). In doing so, access to necessary parts of the EHR (and those parts only) can be built into the interface for each user depending on their role. In order to protect patient confidentiality, health IT systems should be designed with security as a top priority. Firewalls, data encryption, and two-factor authentication should be used ubiquitously.There should be a clear cut policy delineating the expectations for accessing health information and consequences for users who violate these expectations. Health IT systems should include a mechanism for auditing use. Ideally, the auditor would be able to ascertain who accessed what part of the EHR, when, for how long, and for what purpose.
