Case Scenario
Task 1 – Case Scenario
Jenny has recently joined HBO medical practice as a Practice manager. HBO is a medium sized medical practice in a busy Sydney suburb. HBO medical practice employs 4 medical receptionist, 12 General practitioners, 5 Registered nurses, 1 physiotherapist and a dietician.
On few occasions, Jenny has heard the receptionists talking on the phone very loudly with the patients and all of the other patients waiting in the reception area could hear it. Also have realised that after the conversation, two receptionists on the front desk usually discuss with each other the conversation they had with the patients, including their medical history and issues.
Jenny approaches Roger, the Practice Director and discusses her concern regarding the lack of privacy & confidentiality breaches which she has observed in past few weeks. Rogers informed Jenny that the HBO medical practice does not have any formal policy and procedures on maintaining patient’s privacy and confidentiality.
Roger has advised you to immediately develop a Privacy and confidentiality policy and procedures guidelines for the HBO medical Practice staff. The newly developed policy and procedural guidelines will then be implemented to the whole practice. Rogers will organise an urgent staff meeting to communicate about the new policy and procedural guidelines to all the relevant internal and external stakeholders of the practice.
AssignmentTutorOnline
Task requirement:
In this task you are required to develop a policy on Patient’s confidentiality and privacy of health information that can serve as a guide for all staff members of the practice in executing their routine activities.
Your Privacy and confidentiality policies need to cover the following areas:
• What is Privacy and confidentiality
• Informing new patients of practice privacy policy;
• Patient access to their personal health information;
• Alteration of patient records;
• Access to personal health information by practice staff
• Confidentiality agreements;
• Disclosure to third parties;
• Requests for personal health information and medical records by other medical practices;
• Security;
• Patient consent
• Complaints about privacy related matters;
• Retention of medical records and staff training
Tip: Please read and use the information from the additional reading in your learning resources in Topic3, the attached reading is ‘Handbook for the Management of Health Information in Private Medical Practice’
TASK 2: Scenarios
Staff need to have awareness of their own goal and must evaluate own area of work to determine scope of compliance requirements and possible strategies to deal with different ethical issues.
Below are the three different ethical situations provided, which you are required to analyse and develop a strategic response to manage the situation where legal or ethical requirements have been breached.
1. You overhear a receptionist releasing an address and contact details of patient X to patient B, who claims to be an old friend of patient X but has not got the new contact number of Patient X.
2. You saw a staff member getting agitated and verbally abusing a young client from diverse culture.
3. Two staff members are gossiping about the behaviour of a client. They are laughing about their behaviour and medical problems. One of the staff members involved has no responsibility of the treatment of the client.
TASK 3: Project
You work for one of the Health care services organisation in NSW and is responsible for maintaining legal and ethical work practices for the business.
For the upcoming audit, your manager has asked you to prepare a report for Senior management addressing the legal and ethical obligations that applies to the organisation.
In a report you are required to address the following issues/points:
1. List all the key legal and ethical obligations that apply to the organisation and its staff members and briefly describe each which applies.
2. To meet with the requirements of applied legal and ethical obligations, what specific job roles should be created in compliance department and how the people in those roles can update their knowledge in relating to compliance issues or changing legislations?
3. When and why legal advice is needed?
4. Should organisation have policies and procedural guidelines on managing ethical issues? if so, what kind of issues should be addressed in that policy
5. What records is the organisation required to keep?
6. What steps can be taken to ensure that staff members are complying to their legal and ethical obligations
7. What are possible breaches related to legal or ethical conduct that organisation can face?
8. What would be the consequences of non- compliance be?
9. What should the organisation do if breaches occur?
10. How staff member can report the issue relating to breach or unethical act?
11. How organisation can get accreditation, name the bodies through this can be achieved.
12. How organisation can maintain the knowledge of compliance requirements?
13. How the process of continuous improvement can help the organisation in keeping up with their compliance requirements?
