Maintaining patient confidentiality in an electronic world

The importance of patient confidentiality must be integral to the culture of any healthcare organization. This has always been a part of the professional code of ethics but is being made more difficult with the advances in computerized communication systems. Moving from verbal reports to paper charts to electronic data interchange challenges our current policies and procedures for protecting patient data. The character of access has changed making transportation of confidential data to unknown persons and/or locations often impossible to monitor.