My reflection for this week is on the topic of security issues and challenges. Specifically, we talked about what types of security that a healthcare organization might need to invest in, in order to preclude data loss, compromised patient information, hacked databases, records that have been tampered with, stolen laser printers-- you name it. All of these challenges are real and occur with greater frequency that we would like to believe.
Healthcare organizations need to be vigilant in their efforts to protect from hackers, intruders, and criminals. In some respects, strict security policies and protocols need to be implemented, to increase security awareness among all health system employees and guarantee that protections in place are activated and work as they are meant to.
On the other hand, we need to also keep in mind that any newly instituted policy or change has the potential to introduce unintended consequences. For example, although safeguards such as restricted access to certain clinical areas increase the physical safety of sensitive areas, clinicians could run into difficulties with their badges, badge scanner machines, and access grants that prevent them from being able to perform their jobs and provide timely patient care when they are supposed to be allowed to access an area.
System outages and downtime are also disruptive to workflow. Manual entry and transfer of clinician orders and notes can easily open the system to errors and mistakes. My group discussed similar issues with system downtime that have occurred/been occurring at our respective healthcare organizations, at which we did our internships. Having protected and recoverable data is critical for healthcare organizations who store an incredible amount of sensitive information.
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