Paul
E. Pancoast, MD, Timothy B. Patrick, PhD, Joyce A. Mitchell, PhD
Health
Management and Informatics, University of Missouri-Columbia
Physician
PDA Use And HIPAA
Confidentiality
Violation or Good Patient Care ?
7:00 AM – Dr. Smith sees patients at one hospital,
downloads patient information into her PDA
8:30 AM – She drives to a second hospital
where she sees more patients, and downloads their information into her PDA
10:00 AM – En route to her office she is
paged by the first hospital for new patient orders.
10:15 AM – Confirming lab values on her
PDA, she starts a new antibiotic.
?
üPhysicians need access to available clinical information if they are to make optimal patient care decisions.
üA PDA can provide this access when the medical record isn’t available if the information is downloaded.
üPhysicians have an obligation to secure the confidentiality of patient information on their PDA.
üHIPAA privacy regulations took effect April 14, 2003
PDAs can safely store Patient Information with
appropriate Security Measures
1.Power-on Password
Protection
2.Encrypt the data
3.Don’t let
family/friends use your PDA with patient information
4.Disable IR ports
except when transmitting data
5.Don’t transmit data
in public places
This research was supported in part by Library of
Medicine Biomedical and Health Informatics Research Training grant
2-T15-LM07089-11.