Risk Management Position in Healthcare Designated Record Set HIPAA Research Paper

Risk Management Position in Healthcare Designated Record Set HIPAA Privacy Laws - Research Paper Example The paper provides supporting work for the risk management plan as well as the counterarguments to it. In the end, the conclusion establishes the need for a risk management plan. The rights of the people seeking health care have been the subject of much debate over the past decades. One of the rights of the patients is to access their health information and to modify it if it is deemed to have any discrepancy. Several legislations have been passed to grant the patients their due rights and to protect the abuse of medical information and health records of the patients. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 was enacted by President Clinton. The Act has two aspects: it provides confidentiality to the records of the patients and prevents fraud and abuse and it makes sure that insurance and health care is portable. Health information refers to the information, either stored in any form or oral; it is given to a health care provider and is related to the p ast, present and future state of health of an individual. The Privacy rules and the Act regulate what information regarding the health of an individual can be used and disclosed. This information is known as the protected health information (PHI), and organizations which are liable to conform to the Privacy rules are called covered entities. The Designated Record Set (DRS) refers to the group of health records that have been maintained by the covered entities, including the medical and billing information of the patients, enrollment, claims adjudication, as well as the medical record management systems, used for health plans. Its utility is for decision making about individuals. All hospitals, clinics and other healthcare providers are required to comply with the HIPAA. Failing to do so can have dire consequences for the individuals involved.

FEMA Incident Command Systems and National Incident Management Systems Research Paper

FEMA Incident Command Systems and National Incident Management Systems Related to Law Enforcement Personnel - Research Paper Example As a law enforcement officer involved in special operations you have to be able to effectively respond to such operations using certain established guidelines and principles to protect property, live and the environment and restore normalcy. The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) is one such body under the US Department of Homeland Security tasked with handling emergency situations. Given that emergencies are unpredictable events that require cross functional approaches, as more than one agency may be involved, hence the need for a standardized approach and guidelines that are not specific to one agency. The FEMA has a system called the Incident Command System (ICS) that employs methods and standards that have been verified for efficiency and success in the business world and applied to emergency situations using a standard command, control and coordination system to achieve the aims of emergency responses and management. The ICS system enables proper cooperation and coord ination among different agencies since there are emergency occasions when as a special operations officer you may come under the command of someone from a different agency such as fire fighting whose methods and command structures could be different from special operations. This paper will therefore examine the beginnings of ICS, the development of new rules and guidelines with emphasis to the presidential order to the Department for Homeland Security in response to the September 11th terrorist attacks and then look at the guidelines from various sources, discuss them and draw conclusions. ICS can be traced to the 1970s when wildfires became a big problem in California when the state, federal, county and local fire departments, recognizing that no one agency can handle a fire emergency all alone, joined together to form a platform called the Firefighting Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies (FIRESCOPE) that pinpointed certain problems common to emergencies and hindering inter agency cooperation, including non uniform terms and commands, non-aligned communication, a missing scope for increasing or reducing the size of the joint response team depending on the situation, deficient combined plans of action plans and a lack of a command system to oversee inter agency operations (Haddow, Bullock & Coppola, 2011). The ICS is a model tactic built on best practice standards for managing emergencies and incidents that allow for a synchronized response from different agencies that creates a shared approach to scheduling and managing resources and enhances the incorporation of equipment, facilities, staff, systems within a unified organizational framework (â€Å"Introduction to the ICS†, 2009). The ICS has however evolved into an all inclusive emergency response and coordination approach for emergencies that utilizes a unified structure of organization and management system. The ICS is based on five main premises: Command, Logistics, Operatio ns, Planning, Finance/Administration (â€Å"What is the ICS?† 2010) During an emergency the law enforcement agencies leadership is organized into the above units with each having a jurisdiction over all the different agencies involved in the emergency. After the September 11t