patient portal security concerns

by Ms. Marcelina Abbott MD 4 min read

Patient Portals: Security Challenges - …

3 hours ago Oct 24, 2014 · Oct 24 2014. Patient Portals: Security Concern or Effective Tool? Martin Edwards. Guest post by Martin Edwards, MS, CHC, CHPC, compliance officer, Dell Healthcare. Patient portals offer an unprecedented opportunity to engage consumers, provide a customized care experience and potentially change behavior. >> Go To The Portal


While the security measures will reasonably protect your information and use of Patient Portal, if you have any concerns regarding the security of your information or the use of the Internet to access your medical record information through Patient Portal, you should consider not creating a Patient Portal account.

Full Answer

How secure are patient portals?

Oct 24, 2014 · Oct 24 2014. Patient Portals: Security Concern or Effective Tool? Martin Edwards. Guest post by Martin Edwards, MS, CHC, CHPC, compliance officer, Dell Healthcare. Patient portals offer an unprecedented opportunity to engage consumers, provide a customized care experience and potentially change behavior.

Are patient portals a risk to protected health information (PHI)?

Oct 29, 2013 · The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) offered these patient portal security tips on its site for organizations trying harmonize security and accessibility: 1. Implementing a...

Are EHR Patient portals safe and secure?

Jun 01, 2020 · Importance Patient portals can help caregivers better manage care for patients, but how caregivers access the patient portal could threaten patient security and privacy. Objective To identify the proportions of hospitals that provide proxy accounts to caregivers of adult patients, endorse password sharing with caregivers, and enable patients to ...

Why are portals viewed negatively by healthcare providers?

While these methods meet the spirit of electronic patient engagement, they do present HIPAA privacy and security concerns. For this reason, many facilities and organizations are looking to patient portals as a secure means for patients to access their medical record, while also meeting HIPAA requirements when sharing protected health ...

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Is patient portal secure?

Patient portals have privacy and security safeguards in place to protect your health information. To make sure that your private health information is safe from unauthorized access, patient portals are hosted on a secure connection and accessed via an encrypted, password-protected logon.

What are the disadvantages of a patient portal?

Even though they should improve communication, there are also disadvantages to patient portals....Table of ContentsGetting Patients to Opt-In.Security Concerns.User Confusion.Alienation and Health Disparities.Extra Work for the Provider.Conclusion.Nov 11, 2021

What are the security issues associated with engaging patients through an online patient portal?

Some of these risks include: reliance on the patient portal as a sole method of patient communication; patient transmission of urgent/emergent messages via the portal; the posting of critical diagnostic results prior to provider discussions with patients; and possible security breaches resulting in HIPAA violations.Mar 1, 2021

How do you keep patient portals secure?

Here are five ways organizations can bring their patient portal security up-to-date and keep their networks safe from unauthorized access:Portal sign-up process should be automated. ... Keep anti-virus and malware software up to date. ... Multifactor verification is a must. ... Protect patient identities with identity solutions.More items...•Mar 20, 2020

What are the pros and cons of patient portals?

What are the Top Pros and Cons of Adopting Patient Portals?Pro: Better communication with chronically ill patients.Con: Healthcare data security concerns.Pro: More complete and accurate patient information.Con: Difficult patient buy-in.Pro: Increased patient ownership of their own care.Feb 17, 2016

What are the pros and cons of being an e patient?

4 Pros and Cons of Digital Patient Health Data AccessPro: Patients enjoy digital data access.Con: Complicated health info causes concern for patients, docs.Pro: Patients can review info for medical errors.Con: Clinician notes raise patient-provider relationship concerns.Aug 10, 2017

Why do some patients fail to participate in the use of the patient portal?

The reason why most patients do not want to use their patient portal is because they see no value in it, they are just not interested. The portals do not properly incentivize the patient either intellectually (providing enough data to prove useful) or financially.

What information can be accessed through a patient portal?

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as: Recent doctor visits. Discharge summaries.Sep 29, 2017

What is the advantage of a patient portal for the patient?

The Benefits of a Patient Portal You can access all of your personal health information from all of your providers in one place. If you have a team of providers, or see specialists regularly, they can all post results and reminders in a portal. Providers can see what other treatments and advice you are getting.Aug 13, 2020

What are challenges for patients that do not have access to all of the PHRs?

Between underutilization of technology, lack of patient education, and inadequate health IT interoperability, patients and providers are struggling to ensure robust patient health data access.Underutilized patient portals.Ambiguous security protocols.Limited health data interoperability.Aug 11, 2016

Why is PHI encrypted?

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to date have related to the theft or loss of unencrypted mobile devices, encrypting the data is a primary defense against data loss and against the consequences of improper disclosure.

Is PHI unsecured?

Under the HIPAA security rule, as long as PHI is encrypted according to National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines, it is no longer considered “unsecured” and provider s are effectively exempt from improper disclosure being considered a “breach.”.

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The Role of Patient Portals

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MARIANNE MCGEE:What are patient portals? What sorts of organizations are launching them, and why are they important from a regulatory standpoint? ADAM GREENE:Patient portals usually refer to some way for a patient to be able to view some portion of the electronic health records ... of a healthcare provider. ... You c…
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Privacy Challenges with Patient Portals

  • MCGEE: What do you think are the biggest privacyand security challenges related to patient portals? GREENE: I think one of them is authentication. How do you know that the patient is who the patient really says he or she is? There are a number of different strategies for trying to tackle that. Another privacy and security challenge here is that you have an Internet-facing website, ess…
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Authentication For Portal Use

  • MCGEE:What are the various ways that individuals can be credentialed and authenticated for accessing patient portals? GREENE:There are two stages here; the initial identity-proofing and the subsequent authentication every time someone logs into the patient portal. The identity-proofing normally happens either in-person or online. The in-person part could happen as part of the regis…
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Why only Passwords?

  • MCGEE:Why do you think most organizations that have a patient portals will go with the username and password only? GREENE:Difficulty and lack of demand. I think there is going to be a minority of patients who may want the more robust features of multi-factor authentication, and may want to feel confident that their information is not going to be accessible to others based on just the …
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Adult Caregivers

  • MCGEE:What are the privacy and security challenges involved with giving access to elderly patients' information to say, an adult children? GREENE: I think it's a great idea. I think you definitely want to give the tools so that the patient does not have to share their username and password, but instead could have a greater level of control by creating a delegate account wher…
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Other Methods of Access

  • MCGEE:How do patient portals compare with other methods of providing patients with access to their health information, such as secure e-mail? GREENE:I think it is much easier to use. It will also link in sometimes with these other practices. So for example, the patient portal may also be a messaging portal where a secure e-mail is received by an individual. They receive an unsecure e …
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Biggest Emerging Threats

  • MCGEE:What do you think the biggest emerging privacy and security threats for portals? GREENE:I think as you get more of these, there will be more stories of vulnerabilities that have been identified. If the individual changes the URL by one number, and they are able to see someone else's information, I think we'll see security challenges on that front. I think we're going to see a c…
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