Task: Healthcare Information Case Study.
Task: Healthcare Information Case Study.
Hermit’s Pediatrics is a small practice serving the health care needs of children in a small, rural community. The practice has always used paper health records. However, the practice founder, Dr. Melody Hermit, learns that under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering significant incentives to eligible healthcare professionals who effectively adopt electronic health records (EHR). She sees an opportunity to move into the electronic age.
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It takes some time for Dr. Hermit and her staff to get accustomed to using the EHR instead of the paper record, but they quickly see some real advantages. Information in the EHR is always easy to find and is well-organized. Things are going smoothly until one morning when Dr. Hermit and her staff discover that all of their patient records are gone from the EHR. Inadvertently, the system upgrade that was rolled out the night before has overwritten the storage partition containing the records. Luckily, the records had been backed up just before the wipe-out, and are eventually reloaded within a few hours.
Several months later, Dr. Hermit receives an irate phone call from a patient’s mother whose child has been diagnosed with sickle cell disease. The mother’s anger is triggered when a neighbor expresses her sympathy, although the mother has not discussed the diagnosis with anyone. Dr. Hermit questions her staff and learns that the receptionist discussed the child’s diagnosis with the mother’s neighbor after checking his medical records. Dr. Hermit is astounded that the receptionist could even view the patient information, particularly given that the EHR is supposed to be HIPAA compliant according to Planet, the software developer. She is equally surprised when she walks into the reception area only to witness that another patient’s record is in full-sight of those waiting for their appointment. To top Dr. Hermit’s frustration, the Planet software server suffers a malicious software attack. As a consequence, the EHRs of many patients have been compromised, and many others might have been made vulnerable.
Dr. Hermit is now rethinking her decision to adopt an EHR to qualify for the incentive payment after all. The clinic may be better off using paper records until she retires.
Case Study Questions
1. Hermit’s Pediatrics has experienced risks to information confidentiality, data integrity, service availability, and the business itself. Identify the consequences, the vulnerabilities exploited, and the ways these risks could have been mitigated.
2. What are some of the risks that are not addressed by HIPAA, but an EHR software subscriber may need to consider? CITE IN APA AND PLEASE ANSWER
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours. Task: Healthcare Information Case Study.
Task: Healthcare Information Case Study.