NURS FPX 4045 Assessment 2 Protected Health Information (PHI): Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices

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Capella University

NURS-FPX4045

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Protected Health Information (PHI): Privacy, Security, and Confidentiality Best Practices

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) ensures that patients are not the victims of the unjust disclosure of the patient-protected health information (PHI) that could possibly result in a certain extent of harm to their insurability, employability and/or privacy (Isola & Al Khalili, 2023). Patient privacy grants an individual with the control over accessing his personal records whereas security is the exercise of technical and administrative restrictions to ensure against unauthorized disclosure. The paper will discuss how compliance with best practices in PHI privacy, confidentiality, and security correlates with the operations of skilled nursing facilities and its social media policies to safeguard the information of residents.

Confidentiality Laws in Healthcare

The PHI refers to any data that can be used to identify a person (medical or treatment history, diagnosis and any other data) and collected or operated by any healthcare professional in this case, a professional who works in a skilled nursing facility (SNF). HIPAA should safeguard PHI to prevent infringing privacy, safety, and confidentiality of patients (Edemekong et al., 2025). Privacy brings about the rights of patients to determine who will know their health information; a patient in SNF might not wish to disclose the fact that he or she is a sick person (Tariq and Hackert, 2023). Security is related to the protection of electronic PHI through encryption, use of passwords and a firewall.

The level of confidentiality assures the privacy that only people with relevant clearance can access sensitive information (The Knowledge Academy, 2025). The privacy issues in SNFs may arise accidentally during the course of social media activities, e.g. sharing pictures of residents under care. These dangers indicate the necessity to cooperate with people of different professions, train on the HIPAA, and meet the standards. Shared responsibility is very important in order to protect PHI, particularly in the situations when electronic systems and online platforms are highly prevalent in care settings.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration Safeguards ePHI

The significance of interdisciplinary teamwork and its importance in securing electronic health information in SNFs is also important. The collaboration among nurses, social workers, therapists, IT experts, and administrators will formulate safeguards to combine clinical practices with technical safeguards. It should include the access to electronic health records, encryption of information during storage and transmission, and periodic implementation of audits to control that they are adhered (Stefan et al., 2024). These steps being part of the daily processes, including the hospitalization process to the discharge process, the privacy and security will be considered as the part of the regular business process and the chances of the disclosure accidental will be minimized.

This collaborative approach is also imperative to the process of managing social media risks in SNFs. Clinical staff can identify sensitive data, compliance department can read and interpret the HIPAA rules, and information technology departments can be implemented to track and/or avoid illegal distribution. Interdisciplinary training is also useful to ensure that the staff are aware of the policies of the facility, the proper consent protocols, and the methods of identifying potential red flags (Nzimakwe and Utete, 2024). These measures combined are useful in maintaining confidentiality of the residents, building trust, and operating the facility in legal and ethical practices.

Evidence-Based ePHI Risk Mitigation

Evidence-based practices addressed by healthcare facilities to reduce the risk of ePHI include social media policies, periodic interdisciplinary HIPAA-centered training, and monitoring tools used to identify unauthorized access (Secure Frame, 2023). Privacy by design is implemented by encrypting stored and transferred data, access controls by roles, and periodic audits in order to comply with it (Amod, 2024). Policies and procedures are also created to protect identifiable health information, establish the violations, and impose civil or criminal damages (Edemekong et al., 2024). Other steps comprise multifactor authentication, access to authorized staff, and unusual activity surveillance, and the encryption of PHI when relaying information through email, eFax, and text messaging in addition to other measures helps to enhance security (Amod, 2024). As a good number of the breaches are based on human error, the ongoing training of the staff is highlighted to increase the level of awareness and responsibility.

Example

When a video was posted on social media of various nurses in Emory University Hospital Midtown talking down labor and delivery patients, the nurses are no longer in service in Atlanta after it was considered a significant breach of privacy (Jackson, 2022). Similarly, the nursing assistant was fired and imprisoned with 30 days in jail after posting a video of a patient on the Internet without his/her consent (Alder, 2025). These examples demonstrate the dire effects of negligent PHI usage across the internet, such as loss of job, loss of license, criminal and legal fines and penalties as claimed by the court.

Even medical institutions face fines in situations where the violation of privacy of patients occurs as a result of social media abuse. To illustrate, the example of the University of Rochester Medical Centre that concluded with a settlement of 3 million dollars after being discovered that PHI was violently disclosed when losing an unencrypted flash drive and an unencrypted laptop. Elite, a dental practice that is privately owned, is one more example, and they have accepted to pay out 10,000 dollars as a response to the reviews on the social media platform (Secure frame, 2023).

Interprofessional Staff Update

• In order to maintain confidentiality of patients and comply with HIPAA, every individual in the staff working in any field must comply with safe regulations using social media, personal, and institutional. The things that have been prohibited are:
• Always take pictures, videos or audio records of the residents: Without proper authorization and written consent, always take pictures, videos or audio records of residents during care, therapy or daily activities.
• Online conversation about patient cases: Do not involve patient cases, clinical and facility activities on online conversation, even in a closed-group or chat.
• Do not use personal devices: Do nt access and/or use personal devices to take or share patient related material at work or on facility premises.
• They should not respond to the reviews or complaints of patients online: They should not respond to online reviews or complaints that reveal the protected health information.
• Do not befriend, follow, or privately message patients and their family members: Do not use personal accounts to befriend, follow, or privately message patients and their families, as this places the limits of professionalism in jeopardy.
• No tagging, no mentioning, no referring or discussing: Do not identify the facility or its residents (and so on) in a manner that will infringe confidentiality or damage the reputation of the organization.
• Social media professionalism maintains rights of residents, deters unprofitable HIPAA breaches, and conserves trust in care environment. All interprofessional team members have the responsibility of using personal and facility social media in accordance to legal and ethical and organizational standards.