The Role of Data Privacy in Patient Experience
As we continue to reflect on the ways that digital health can enhance the patient journey, it is essential to discuss a missing element that underpins these advancements: data privacy and compliance. Patient trust is the foundation of effective healthcare, and data protection is paramount. Mishandled patient information, whether through breaches or improper usage, not only compromises the privacy of individuals - but erodes trust in the healthcare system.
In today’s discussion we will examine the critical importance of safeguarding patient data, navigating the relevant regulatory landscape through robust platform policy controls and how this can be used to leverage data security as a competitive advantage for the patients you serve.
Understanding the Foundation: Why Data Privacy Matters in Digital Health
Establishing and nurturing trust, much like in personal relationships, is crucial for creating a solid foundation and serves as a cornerstone in delivering meaningful care. As we continue to move towards an increasingly digital world, this element of trust and security continues to increase in importance on the overall patient experience. Expanding patient interactions beyond the clinical setting introduces additional layers of risk that must be carefully addressed when establishing and providing care through digital modalities.
When considering how trust is built and its importance to patients, it really starts with being transparent and communicating clearly about the benefits and potential risks. Patients need to understand how their data is going to be collected, stored and used at all stages. Not only that, but patients also need to understand what value they are gaining by providing additional access to their information to their care providers. Through clear communication and candid discussion around privacy policies and controls, data security measures, and any risks that could be exposed to the patient, you foster an increased level of trust.
Apart from the direct interaction between caregivers and patients, the connection between caregivers and pertinent regulatory entities is crucial for building and upholding trust. This includes guaranteeing that your procedures and systems are structured to protect patient data throughout the entire process. Undoubtedly, a significant aspect of this capability to safeguard patient information depends on the specific platform policy controls that act to govern each organization's actions.
Building Secure Systems: Strategies for Protecting Patient Data
The importance of a robust framework for protecting patient data goes beyond just maintaining trust in the healthcare system. Regulations like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rightly-so impose severe ramifications if healthcare data is mishandled. When we look at what makes up a secure system, it is easier to examine through the lens of specific policy controls:
Data Privacy and Confidentiality: ensuring that users are both understanding and abiding by confidentiality standards that act to protect information both at-rest and in-transit such as encryption.
Access Control and Authentication: Having clearly defined access controls based on the individual role and operating under a minimum required access model. In addition to the above, ensuring that your organization utilizes authentication and validation methods such as two-factor and location-based authentication to be as robust as possible in your data protection.
Regulatory Compliance: Adhering to relevant federal and state-level regulatory requirements such as HIPAA
Data Residency and Sovereignty: Specifying the location in which data may be stored and processed based on the regional and/or national requirements. This may be different in the various regions you serve. Additionally, who takes ownership of the data at its various stages and is responsible for the monitoring.
Interoperability Standards: Providing standardized data formats and communication protocols which connect to other systems in your care environment. These might include APIs based on the FHIR framework, connecting with a variety of systems such as EHRs.
Incident Response and Reporting: While being covered by regulatory compliance, ensuring that both suspected security breaches or data comprises are addressed in a timely manner. Including clear notice to the individuals, support when needed and information to regulators where required by law.
Ethical Use: Training staff on acceptable use-cases for sensitive information.
Ensuring that each one of your interconnected systems encompasses industry leading policies and procedures is essential. For some of the above components, they will be unique to your organization or areas of focus, for others they will be somewhat standardized throughout the healthcare environment.
While platform policy controls are vital for the long-term safeguarding of patient and organizational information; they are not the only tool that can be used to bolster your digital footprint. As we continue towards an increasingly digital world, the concept of zero trust should be explored.
The Concept of Zero Trust
This section will explore some additional security principles that go beyond the standard platform policy controls mentioned above and can further provide a competitive edge to those who utilize them. Together, these concepts reinforce the foundation you have built with your policies and compound the security of your systems.
The first concept that we will explore is that of the assumed breach.
The assumed breach implies that your organization should always keep their guard up and act as if there is a malicious presence within your environment. By doing so, you build and implement security controls that innately act to minimize and isolate any potential future impact. This concept, while sounding simple, involves meticulous examination of your internal processes and promotes the building of barriers where trust would otherwise reside. Beyond that, it involves educating your stakeholders on the importance of verification and establishing a clear understanding and buy-in of the expected behavior.
Verification instead of Trust
As part of assuming there is an ever-present threat, healthcare organizations must ensure that both their systems, and those of their partners, authorize users and their devices each and every time they attempt to access a resource or system, thwarting hijacked accounts, instances and devices.
It involves continuously monitoring the status of all organizational assets, including applications, endpoints, servers and more to ensure that their status is both known and confirmed acceptable. By leaving nothing to ambiguity, you dramatically reduce the likelihood of nefarious actions going unchecked and can respond swiftly to perceived threats.
Penetration and Vulnerability Testing
While not directly encompassed in Zero-Trust, the concept of testing your systems for potential vulnerabilities cannot be understated. The goal is to identify and address weak-points in your systems before outside actors can. By participating in this form of testing, you are taking the idea of verification instead of trust to the extreme by intentionally trying to break the systems that you use. While not always fruitful, this practice will help you to stay ahead of the curve and create a culture of continuous improvement towards security.
This form of testing can also leverage human constructs such as social engineering and phishing to effectively audit your internal compliance with your policies and procedures, creating opportunities for learning without the realized risks. Remember the best time to invest in your technology system security is before an issue happens!
Closing Thoughts
As we continue to enhance the patient experience with technology across the clinical environment, it is essential to safeguard patient data and foster continuous improvement in both our systems and procedures. Ensuring that patients can not only trust care providers to improve their health, but also shield them from perceived digital threats is paramount as we continue to add additional touchpoints with patients beyond the confines of the traditional care environment. By applying robust policy controls and zero-trust principles, you can not only protect your patients but build competitive advantages and increase loyalty from those you serve.
If your organization is seeking to enhance their digital offerings, whether through security or digital offerings, don’t hesitate to reach out below for a custom consultation with a Mozzaz expert.
