All healthcare procedures and acts are guided by laws, principles, and concepts that enable patient quality care. For example, federal legislation known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), which was introduced in 1996, mandated the development of standards to prevent the disclosure of confidential client health information without the client’s awareness or agreement (CDC, n.d.). To put HIPAA’s provisions into practice, the US Department of Health and Human Services established the HIPAA Privacy Rule (CDC, n.d.). A portion of the data included in the Privacy Rule is protected under HIPAA law. In other terms, medical professionals should prioritize the interests of the patients and not violate their trust by disclosing sensitive information.
Moreover, healthcare workers should prioritize their patients’ interests in other areas as well. The components required for the reflective balance are completed by the ethics of medical concepts. Fairness, beneficence, non-maleficence, and autonomy are the cornerstones of healthcare practice (Porter & Rai, 2018). For instance, beyond merely ignoring damage, beneficence entails doing good for the patients. It implies a degree of generosity that is lacking from solely avoiding damage. Medical professionals are ethically required to conduct constructive and direct actions to benefit others, according to the ethical principle that requires them to participate in selfless acts (Porter & Rai, 2018). Similarly, it is vital to incorporate the concept of autonomy and allow the patients to make decisions as they have full access to their options. In this sense, such concepts improve care for consumers by respecting them as patients and acting in their best interests in terms of health.
In sum, all actions and processes in the healthcare industry are governed by laws, values, and ideas that promote high-quality patient care. HIPPA, for instance, requires the creation of guidelines to stop the exposure of private client health information. Medical personnel should put patients’ needs first and avoid violating their confidence by sharing private information. In addition, healthcare professionals should put the interests of their patients first. As an illustration, beneficence entails a level of generosity that is missing from merely avoiding harm. Similarly to this, it is crucial to include the idea of autonomy and provide patients the freedom to choose since they have full access to all of their alternatives.
References
CDC. (n.d.). HIPPA. Web.
Porter, K. K., & Rai, G. S. (2018). Principles of medical ethics. In Medical ethics and the elderly (pp. 1-6). CRC Press.