Managing Privacy in a Social Media World
By Alan F. Dowling, PhD, chief executive officer
SOCIAL MEDIA HAS had a profound
impact on recent events, both political
and personal. In healthcare, social media is presenting HIM professionals with
a quandary about how best to manage
information privacy.
More and more people from all walks of
life are using social media outlets such
as YouTube, Facebook, and blogging. In
fact social media played such a large role
in the recent protests in Egypt that the
Egyptian government shut down access
to the Internet and cell phone service.
President Obama urged the Egyptian
government “to reverse the actions that
they’ve taken to interfere with access to
the Internet, to cell phone service and to
social networks that do so much to con-
nect people in the 21st century.”
However, many traditional privacy protocols are being disregarded by many of
the people who are adopting social media. So, while Mashable.com CEO Pete
Cashmore’s statement, “Privacy is dead,
and social media hold the smoking gun,”
may seem a bit extreme, its core message has an essential truth and is a direct
warning.
Privacy and Social Media
Social media’s massive movement of
information is creating the potential for
improved information availability, but it is
also creating the potential for increased
information error, abuse, and new legal
liabilities in healthcare. As healthcare
information demands for near real-time
messaging continues to increase, consumers’ concerns for their privacy and
security also increases. To complicate
matters, these communication technologies are evolving in ways that even their
creators never imagined.
So, health information managers, the
guardians of privacy and security, will
increasingly find themselves at the cen-
ter of a communication revolution that
is changing the methods through which
health information is demanded and, as
a result, transferred. This presents HIM
professionals with both a challenge and
an opportunity.
In This Issue
Social media’s rapid, pervasive communication style represents both possibility
and liability for healthcare organizations,
write members of AHIMA’s privacy and
security practice council. In “Social Media and Healthcare,” the authors offer
policy recommendations that help protect information accuracy and patient
privacy.
Healthcare fraud is the subject of a
recent report conducted by the AHIMA Foundation. Experts interviewed in
“Stopping Fraud” note that EHR systems
must do a better job of deterring fraud,
and HIM professionals, with their experience in both clinical processes and information technology, have a role to play.
In the February issue, Casey Holmes
described the benefits—and challenges—of using coded problem lists in the
EHR. In this issue she furthers the discussion by exploring the benefits of
achieving standardized content and form
in part 2 of “The Problem List beyond
Meaningful Use.” ¢
