HIPAA. The Electronic Health Record

HIPAA
Name
Institution Affiliation
The electronic health record is a system used to store health records of patients in a modern computerized way. It contains the medical history of a patient in that hospital and is mostly available to authorized users especially hospital staff. Health insurance portability and accountability act ensure that information and records stored electronically regarding a patients' health are safely secured (Stephen, 2007). These records contain vital information that may end up putting the patient's life in trouble when accessed by the wrong person. For instance, a patient's local address and employment status featured in the electronic data system may lead to the abduction, rape, theft or even murder by people with bad intentions. Many problems in the electronic health record may lead to these bad circumstances for the patient example, hacking done by criminals with intelligence.
Gathering information for the malicious purpose could be a goal as to why the laptop and the computers were stolen. Computers and laptops for staff contain an enormous amount of information that is used by the hospital. This information is entered specifically by patients into the database of the health records for consumers (Thomas, 2003). Some hospitals create a website in which the patient fills a form regarding the information they want to share. These may be interested in collecting a specific persons' data and distributing either to destroy him or her, create a publicity stunt of the patient's care to patients' information or use the information to blackmail the patient using the information which is not good. The stolen computers may have the precise information the thugs needed in the activity they were to embark on.
The relation between the stealing of the laptop and computer can be because of access. Most people don't have access to the records of a patient in the hospital this includes friends, public and other stakeholders and can lead to one trying to find a way to obtain the information at what cost even through stealing. Most systems have three key elements of access that is site, system and data authorization. The site system means that the person does not have the authority to access the place where the data is stored. System consent refers to the person being unable to access the system of information or is approved but maybe with supervision while data permission access is when the thief does not have access to the data in the information system but all this requires one to be authorized in the above two. This means that the attacker reasoned with stealing because he or she did not have access t...