Free Custom «A Unique Patient Identifier » Essay Paper

The Health Management Information Systems refers to a software application that is used to store all the information gathered of the people seeking for medical attention in hospitals around the United States. The HMIS stores information on the general characteristics and the individual needs of the patients as gathered and this helps the relevant doctors and other medical care givers to come up with the relevant and most effective ways and means of controlling and treating a patient and in the offering of any other required health services. When information is stored in a good and organized way that is easy to be accessed, read and understood, then it is easy for the people concerned to look at and compare the data collected then or earlier to assist a patient on a return visit in the same hospital or in a different hospital from any part of the country. It is important to have this kind of data stored in an accessible manner since many different people may at one time require the same data order to assist a patient like in the case of an emergency. The Hospital Management Information Systems have tailored at providing the essential standards for use in the collection, sharing and safeguarding of any stored data.

 

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A Unique Patient Identifier is a value that is permanently assigned to a particular person for the sole reason of identification purposes and is unique throughout the whole healthcare system across the country since it is not shared with anyone else. It facilitates the positive identification of an individual for prompt healthcare services delivery. A UPI has the potential to enable a patient to access prompt care through the easy healthcare information access using the UPI, hence reduce the time one needs to spend at a health facility. The UPI can also be used in the aggregation of health information for any further analysis and research necessary. Encryption and other data security methods should be used to protect the information and identity of an individual. In cases where medical tests results are being communicated, the security of an individual should be guaranteed (Beaver, 12). Only the people who are directly involved in the actual care of the individual should be allowed access to the medical records, like the patient himself and their doctor only. The DICOM standards are controlled by the DICOM Standards Committee which is mandated to create and maintain high standards in the sharing of biomedical and other therapeutic diagnosis across all fields that use any form of digital imaging or any related data. In any case where one plans to adopt a major HMIS standard like this one, there is set parameters that one should have in place. These include but are not limited to a secure network and digital storage system and also current encryption software to protect personal patient data (Beaver, 34).

Medicine is a very professional field and it is very important for the overall healthy existence of the human kind. It takes only trained professionals to ensure the proper running of a medical centre. As such it is important to safeguard the professional language that is only used and understood by trained professionals. As much as technology changes, it is important to protect medical records by upholding a code that can only be used and understood by the trained people because these kind of information in the wrong hands can turn out to be very dangerous. If the medical field became too lax in the language used and adopted any common language, then it would eventually lead to a breach because it would mean that any other tom, dick and harry can easily access patient records and even tamper with them. Today with the use of the standardization codes, patient and doctors records remain safe even if a layman were to access them because the person would not easily understand what the records mean and if they decided to tamper with the same, then the doctor would easily realize that the records were tampered with at first glance. This would ensure that the doctor or care giver corrects the record again before commencing treatment. It is therefore justifiable beyond any reasonable doubt that the use of standardized codes for referencing of medical data should be upheld for the sole comprehension of the medical staff.