Privacy Officers: Who They are and Where They Work

The study's objective is to examine the role of healthcare privacy officers, including their personal and organizational knowledge, and the facilities where they work. A survey was conducted of privacy officers that are members of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). This resulted in 123 responses that were analyzed for this study. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize factors. The results showed the characteristics predominant among privacy officers are female, higher age, employed in healthcare for numerous years, mostly hold credentials, higher educated, with higher self-reported knowledge levels. Privacy officers are housed in several departments, with the majority within health information management (HIM). Their facilities are typically acute-care hospitals or healthcare systems located in states without additional privacy laws and are primarily non-profit.