Special Report on Protecting Patient Health Information During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

On April 10, 2020, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs stated that military medicine is at the front lines of the national Novel Coronavirus (COVID19) response, bringing unique and agile expertise and rapidly deployable resources to the fight. The Assistant Secretary also stated that the DoD and its Military Health System have mobilized doctors, nurses, and medical technicians from active duty and the Reserve Components to two ships and numerous expeditionary field hospitals around the country to support local health care systems. The Assistant Secretary emphasized that the DoD is diligently working to ensure that its beneficiaries have continued access to the care they need by ramping up virtual health capabilities, establishing driveup testing sites, and putting the right protection measures in place to minimize exposure risk to patients and health care workers. As the DoD continues to support the Nation in treating COVID19 cases around the world, it is imperative that personnel working in military medical treatment facilities (MTFs)renew their efforts to protect controlled unclassified information, including patient health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII). PHI is a subset of PII, and if obtained, can be used to steal identities and reveal the health conditions and medical diagnosis of a patient. As the Nations COVID19 cases continue to increase and the DoD works diligently to care for the sick, the DoD must ensure that controls are in place to not only protect patients, physicians, and nurses from further spreading the virus, but also protect the sensitive and personal data collected from those individuals from unauthorized access and inadvertent disclosure.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 23, 2020
Accession Number
AD1104727

Entities

People

  • Carol N. Gorman

Organizations

  • Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Best Practices
  • Covid-19
  • Cyberattacks
  • Cybersecurity
  • Department Of Defense
  • Health
  • Health Care
  • Health Services
  • Lessons Learned
  • Medical Personnel
  • Medical Technicians
  • Military Hospitals
  • Military Medicine
  • Physical Security
  • Physicians
  • Therapy

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.
  • Infectious Disease/Epidemiology
  • Trauma or Military Medicine