Healthcare Issues

Legal Issues in Health Care- Case Law

University of Phoenix

August 17, 2008

Legal Issues in Health Care- Case Law Search

Have you ever notice that every time you turn on the TV there is always a lawsuit for malpractice insurance or something similar to that state. One thing we never hear is the legal issues concerning electronic health information. Public health agencies increasingly use electronic means to acquire, use, maintain, and store personal health information. Electronic data formats can improve performance of core public health functions, but potentially threaten privacy because they can be easily duplicated and transmitted to unauthorized people. Although such security breaches do occur, electronic data can be better secured than paper records, because verification, authorization, auditing can smooth the progress of accountability.

Computer technology is transforming the ways in which health information is obtained, used, disclosed, and stored in the modern healthcare system. Fundamental changes in the organization, delivery and financing of national healthcare services through managed care and integrated delivery plans require sophisticated health information systems that facilitate information sharing (Gostin, Hodge, Valdiserri 2001). Increasingly, individual patient medical records are stored in electronic databases by government and private medical providers. Automated technologies may someday permit patient medical records to be recorded longitudinally from birth to death and accessed widely in a national healthcare information communication. E-mail correspondence is increasingly a viable communication link between patients and physicians(Gostin, Hodge, Valdiserri 2001).

Public, online networks including MEDLINE, EMR, the Internet, and the World Wide Web allow health consumers and physicians to quickly and relatively inexpensively access a wealth of medical information, reports, articles,...