Compliance With Electronic Medical Records Privacy Policy: An Empirical Investigation of Hospital Information Technology Staff

Abstract

The employment of Electronic Medical Records is expected to better enhance health care quality and to relieve increased financial pressure. Electronic Medical Records are, however, potentially vulnerable to security breaches that may result in a rise of patients’ privacy concerns. The purpose of our study was to explore the factors that motivate hospital information technology staff’s compliance with Electronic Medical Records privacy policy from the theoretical lenses of protection motivation theory and the theory of reasoned action. The study collected data using survey methodology. A total of 310 responses from information technology staff of 7 medical centers in Taiwan was analyzed using the Structural Equation Modeling technique. The results revealed that perceived vulnerability and perceived severity of threats from Electronic Medical Records breaches may be used to predict the information technology staff’s fear arousal level. And factors including fear arousal, response efficacy, self-efficacy, and subjective norm, in their turn, significantly predicted IT staff’s behavioral intention to comply with privacy policy. Response cost was not found to have any relationship with behavioral intention. Based on the findings, we suggest that hospitals could plan and design effective strategies such as initiating privacy-protection awareness and skills training programs to improve information technology staff member’s adherence to privacy policy. Furthermore, enhancing the privacy-protection climate in hospitals is also a viable means to the end. Further practical and research implications are also discussed.

Continuance compliance of privacy policy of electronic medical records: the roles of both motivation and habit

“…Through compliance with a stated privacy policy, employees of these healthcare facilities can effectively protect the privacy of the patients. Despite several studies which have investigated the determinants of adherence to a privacy policy [4, 5, 8, 11, 58], patient privacy and the ultimate success of EMR remain dependent on continuance protection rather than on one time protection. Surprisingly, prior to this particular study, little, if any, effort has been made to fill this gap in the literature.…”

“…Via EMR, healthcare professionals can serve to inquire after patient information immediately without the limitations of time and space [3]. However, with the advent of a more accessible and comprehensive EMR system, a massive amount of medical records may become easily obtainable to both unauthorized and authorized users who are both inside and outside the healthcare facilities [4]. EMR are therefore potentially susceptible to security breaches which may lead to real patients’ privacy concerns [1].…”

“…Although existing literature has significantly enhanced our understanding of the drivers for privacy policy compliance [4, 5, 8, 11], little is known about what happens afterwards. Persuading hospital employees to adhere to EMR privacy policy is of limited value if they subsequently eschew it and then return to risky non-compliance behaviors.…”

Characterizing Consumer Behavior in Leveraging Social Media for E-Patient and Health-Related Activities

“…The PMT postulates that threats and coping appraisal motivate an individual to undertake self-protective behavior [25]. The PMT model has been applied to examine health-related intention and behavior, for example, the way to change attitude in embracing healthier living [36], the adoption of mobile health services [26,37], and compliance with electronic medical record privacy policies [38]. Babazadeh et al [36] conducted a study to explore the factors that shaped skin cancer preventive behaviors (SCPB) in rural areas and suggested that it was the perceived susceptibility that influenced preventive behaviors among farmers.…”

The Use Of Auxiliary Documentation Resources In Medical Practice. The Impact Of peaceMed Project Upon The Romanian Medical Community

“…The study of the behaviour of documentation from auxiliary sources in the current practice of medical staff has received little attention so far. Most papers refer to the implementation of medical data recording systems in hospitals (Bae et al, 2017;Sher et al, 2017;Damotte et Jindal & Raziuddin, 2018) and do not focus on the constant need to inform the medical staff in order to be up to date with the latest research, carried out at international level. The few published articles addressing the importance of information from accredited online sources present case studies covering a limited number of countries (Hider et al, 2009;Lindsey & Olin, 2013), such as: Mongolia (Callen, Buyankhishig & McIntosh, 2008), Saudi Arabia (Khudair & Cooke, 2008), Australia (Rowlands, Coverdale, & Callen, 2016;Shepheard, 2017) or Nigeria (Watts & Ibegbulam, 2006).…”