Administrative Ethics Paper
Erika Nunez-Walker
HCS/335
09/08/2014
Claudia Unrein

Administrative Ethics Paper
A patient’s electronic protected health information is an important issue when it comes to privacy for the patients and physicians. “Communicating with patients using mobile devices such as Blackberrys, iPhones, iPads, or Android phones is fast growing trend among healthcare providers” (Barrett, 2011) . In the world today physicians and patients are using mobile devices an order to communicate with each other more and more. This of course raises distresses when it comes to the security of protected health information. This article discusses the issue on security by the use of electronic transfer of protected health information between health care providers and patients and also how those issues may cross HIPAA Security Rule.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was establish in 1996, in order to protect the privacy and security of patient’s health information. “The Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Protected Health Information (the Security Rule) establish a national set of security standards for protecting certain health information that is held or transferred in electronic form” (U.S Department of Health & Human Services, n.d). There are many reasons why the use of mobile devices triggers the HIPAA Security Rule. Unauthorized disclosure of protect health information is very much at risk because mobile devices can only store in two ways: within the phone memory itself; or within the SIM card. When physicians and patients exchange electronic protected health information the mobile device keeps record on the device which is not good because that means that unauthorized users can have access to this record if the mobile device is lost or stolen. “The most common form of security breach is the