The Effect of Smart Phone and Social Media Platforms On Healthcare Services

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Introduction

The following is a discussion on the effect of mobile phones and social media application on health care. Everybody loves their phone and even more mind a lot on how people especially friends see you in the social media platform. As a matter of fact, everybody dreams of being that one participant in a Facebook group or page or that twitter or Instagram wall whose post or comment is anticipated by lots of members. If smart phones do better our lives in reading the positive comments under our posts, then it’s not limited to individualism alone, health care being one of many sectors that social media affects have also its grip. Technology has positive and negative effects on everything it affects including health care. In this paper the emphasis on the technology will be limited to the use of mobile phones and social media application like Facebook in health care with regard to patient care and health insurance portability and accountability act (Sanders, 2020). This however does not entail all the effect technology has on the medical sector. The most basic issue to consider concerning the use of smart phones is that they are customized to individual privacy unless the unfortunate happens. That self-privacy should be considered in every scenario

In regard to the health insurance portability and accountability act of 1996(Kassebaum-Kenedy Act) the health care insurance coverage for workers and their family that change or lose their jobs should be protected at all cost. The abuse and fraud that may be possible due to the use of social media is to be avoided with media liability reform that requires enactment of national standards for electronic medical care.

The basic reason for the establishment to the HIPAA act was to create confidentiality procedures within and beyond healthcare facilities and keeping medical information safe to individual level. The HIPAA act cover all workers in private or public medical units, medical students, electronic medical record keeping companies and all non-patient personnel working in the health facilities. The HIPAA act protects information such as name, street address, telephone numbers, and email address among others that has an identifier kink to a specific patient. The act furthermore has exceptions regarding injuries from a crime, abuse, infectious or communicable diseases among others. Written or spoken or electronic data and its transmission within or outside the facility are protected. The act protects several types of data including software and hardware among others. The penalty of violating the HIPAA act for the offense done with the intent to sell or transfer a patient’s identifiable medical information for monetary gain or malicious damage the penalty is up to 250,000 us dollars. For the disclosure of individual identifiable information of a patient the cost is up to us dollars 50,000 while non corrected violation attracts up to us dollars 50000 per violation (Edmekong, 2020).

Other than the HIPAA act is illegal to post, tag photos of fans or other people without their permission. The permission should be written before tagging or posting photos of you with other people or other people’s photos on Facebook pages. This clearly goes against the privacy rules of nearly all social media platforms.

From the scenario in the case study, the night shift nurse due to boredom and absent mindedness took pictures of her with Jerrod the singer and accidentally forgot her phone in the clinic as she was leaving the next morning. The day shift nurse took the phone and sold the photos to the gossip gazette thinking that her identity would be untraced. The two cases are similar in a way but also different in another. The night shift nurse chose to bypass the rules of the healthcare facility by taking pictures of her with an unconscious patient thus breaking the very rules for privacy. The night shift nurse was overtaken by the thought of fulfilling her absentia at the party by giving prove of being with Jerrod. That was totally unprofessional.

The day shift nurse takes the photos and with her greed and lack of concern for her fellow employee and the facility decides to sell them to the gazette. In this case its clear to point out that the rules and regulations for privacy of the patients were either not known to these two nurses at all or they didn’t make any impact on them of what would happen if the photos they took with the singer would cost them their jobs and render the clinic unfit for any other patient.

The night shift made a gross mistake by taking those photos which she would say it was out of desperation. However, the day shift nurse worsened the crime by being selfish and inconsiderate about the fate of her fellow worker and her employer. The HIPAA act states the rules regarding patient privacy; the focus of the statute is to create confidentiality systems within and beyond healthcare facilities (Kassebaum–Kennedy Act). This should be clearly stated and frequently reminded to the employee through posters and during meetings. Customer confidentiality should be instilled into every worker be it health care employee or non-healthcare employee working in the facility.

This study case apart from it being important to our research does not limit us not to consider other merit and demerits for the use of technology. The positive impact of technology and in particular the social media platforms are a good count. Improved or enhanced networking professional education being the first. Interaction and information sharing on Facebook pages can be helpful to health care professionals when need to consultations arise. Patient education is also another positive impact of these social sites. Patients get numerous information regarding clinics, medical practitioners and medication from these sites which is quite helpful. Online doctors treat their patients remotely through online communications. Live Health Online, Connect Med, Doctors on Call among others are online treating and consulting health care platforms. Furthermore, some online doctors provide online patient care through the net and also perform public health programs through their websites or blog pages. These are just but positive impacts that the social media interactions sites have provided for the health care sector.

There are risks however that come in with the social media interactions of the medical personnel and members of the public. Damaging of professional image may happen when information about a facility or personnel is released on an ill motive (Bryan, 2020). The information may be true or not regardless this will tarnish the image of that facility like in our case. Some information posted on these sites may breach patient privacy. This may be intentional or otherwise but if the information is private it would be professional for it to remain so.

The above discussion takes us back to adhering to the rules and regulations regarding the medical practicing personnel. Personal issues should not take control of our professions regardless of the excuse one would have. It is also an obligation that the healthcare management has to consider reminding their workers of the standards required of them in the profession. Technology is a very vital tool and will have a great impact on health care service delivery worldwide but this will only happen when the people in the health sector take it positively without any selfish interests included. Otherwise cases like this in case study will recur now and then.

References

Bryan M.A., Evans Y., Morishita C., Midamba N., Moreno M. (2020). Parental Perceptions of the Internet and Social Media as a Source of Pediatric Health Information .Academic Pediatrics, Volume 20.

Edemekong PF, Haydel MJ. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) [Updated 2020 Feb 18]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2020 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500019/Sanders R., Linn A.J., Araujo T.B., Vliegenthart R., van Eenbergen M.C., van Weert J.C.M. (2020). Different platforms for different patients’ needs: Automatic content analysis of different online health information platformsInternational Journal of Human Computer Studies, Volume 137.