Employee Privacy with Smartphones

Who owns the data on your smartphone? If you have access to company e-mail, can your employer request to see your phone at any time? What if your employer pays a cell phone allowance? New technology raises all sorts of issues regarding employee privacy, rights to intellectual property, and security of information.

Workplace Bullying

Some statistics show that the victims of harassment and workplace bullying wait an average of 22 months before coming forward to complain. It may be a failing of employers that they do not empower their workers to come forward when discrimination appears. It shows that trust among all levels of an organization is fundamental to a healthy workplace.

Villains of decision making

1. Narrow framing = limited options
2. Confirmation bias = seeing only data which supports what you want
3. Short-term emotion = sometimes overcome good decisions

Teenagers decision making

Researchers say teenagers usually use a whether or not decision making process. Only two options. Ironically, this is the same method most managers and executives use when making business decisions.

Photos as PHI

Most people do not realize how much data a photograph from a smart phone carries. Even if the patient's face is not pictured, a photo usually has a time stamp when it was taken and geo tagging revealing exactly where it was taken. Those two bits of information can be enough to identify the patient. And guess what that means? HIPAA violation, potential fines, and personnel action. Just a word of caution.

Social Networking

There are a number of social networking considerations for healthcare workers. One thing to consider is the access you have with your own personal digital device (i.e. iPhone, laptop, tablet). If you have access to patient information on you smart phone, are you prepared to give it up if there is an investigation related to a data breach. Employers need to have solid policies when they give access to employees on their personal devices.

EMS Compliance

We ran into the Compliance Officer for PHI at lunch today. It's nice to know that other services struggle with fitting the square peg of EMS compliance into the round hole of the compliance conferences. Hospitals are obviously the 800 pound gorilla in room in health care, but there are other facets to the industry. And mandatory compliance programs will be coming to EMS ... soon.