NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 4 Risk Mitigation

Name

Capella university

NURS-FPX 8012 Nursing Technology and Health Care Information Systems

Prof. Name

Date

Risk Management Plan

The paper explores the risks associated with telehealth implementation at Kaiser Foundation Hospital identified through SAFER Guides, focusing on their occurrence, potential harm, and strategies for mitigation. A detailed table highlights critical risks, such as incomplete interoperability, insufficient encryption, limited contingency planning, and inconsistent patient identification. The assessment evaluates these risks and proposes targeted mitigation strategies to enhance patient safety, data security, and care quality. This analysis aims to optimize telehealth systems by addressing these gaps, ensuring they align with regulatory standards and healthcare best practices.

Risk identified by SAFER Guides	Possibility of Occurrence (Frequent, Sometimes, Never)	Potential for Harm (Severe, Mild, None)	Mitigation to Address Risks	Possibility of Occurrence (Frequent, Sometimes, Never)	Potential for Harm (Severe, Mild, None)
Incomplete interoperability between telehealth and external systems	Sometimes	Mild	Develop a comprehensive interoperability framework and establish data-sharing agreements with external providers regarding telehealth. For instance, the hospital can integrate standard protocols like HL7 or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) (Miandoab et al., 2023).	Never	None
Lack of end-to-end encryption in patient communications	Frequent	Severe	Implement advanced encryption protocols, ensure HIPAA compliance, and conduct regular security audits for telehealth. For instance, TLS and AES-256 encryption standards can be utilized for better protection (Smid, 2021).	Sometimes	Mild
Limited contingency planning for technical failures	Sometimes	Severe	Enhance redundancy in telehealth systems, regularly test backup systems, and train staff for system outages. For example, an automated failover system switches to a backup system or server automatically to maintain telehealth service continuity during technical failures.	Sometimes	Mild
Inconsistent patient identification during telehealth consultations	Sometimes	Severe	Standardize patient verification protocols for telehealth online consultations and implement biometric or multi-factor authentication systems. For instance, two-factor authentication can be utilized by requiring patients to enter a secure code sent to their registered phone number or email before accessing telehealth consultations.	Sometimes	Mild

Ethical or Legal Issues Related to Identified Risks

Kaiser Foundation Hospital must understand the implications as addressing them is crucial in maintaining patient safety, confidentiality, and trust within telehealth systems. Failure to consider these consequences can harm patients and cause significant organizational legal liabilities. The patient’s care may be disjointed if integration between telehealth applications and other systems is not successfully solved. One of the most convincing arguments is that a provider could not get valuable, even life-saving, data about a patient’s condition without full interoperability (Miandoab et al., 2023).

Ethically, it violates the principle of beneficence since the healthcare providers may be unable to do what is in the patient’s best interest. Legal concerns might cause violations of interoperability regulations provided under rules such as the 21st Century Cures Act, which lead to penalties for healthcare bodies.Lack of end-to-end encryption in telehealth communications can violate the ethical principle of confidentiality since other parties can access patient information. This also could compromise the privacy of individuals, provoking even violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), thus engaging organizations in legal liabilities and fines (Fields, 2020).

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 4 Risk Mitigation

Suppose patient trust is lost because their data has been breached. In that case, the overall patient-provider relationship will be affected, and patients will shy away from the recommended care, thus worsening the health inequalities. Further lack of adequate contingency to account for technical malfunctions in EHR integrated telehealth consultation process can block patients’ access to care essential during system downtimes, which is against justice. From a legal perspective, this may result in a lawsuit if negligence in telehealth services is likely to have a mental effect on a patient. For instance, an extended consultation time because of a system breakdown might lead to a failure to diagnose or develop complications in a patient, which puts the organization at risk of liability (Maria et al., 2022).

Lastly, a lack of standard patient identification means that the wrong patient may be given sensitive medical information or receive incorrect treatment. This is also contrary to non-maleficence because it may lead to harm in society. From a legal standpoint, misidentification violates HIPAA by invading the integrity of a patient’s privacy due to known or known factors. It can lead to massive fines for both civil and criminal nature. Furthermore, organizations become vulnerable to lawsuits by patients if they receive the wrong treatment or develop complications due to misinterpreted signs, symptoms, or treatment confusion from wrong identification. The fines range from a minimum of one hundred to 1.5 million dollars, or imprisonment in criminal aspects of about one year to 10 years (Edemekong et al., 2024).

Justification of Actions to Address Identified Risks

The first justification is for Incomplete Interoperability. To eliminate the risks of incomplete interoperability, more work has to be done to create an extensive interoperability framework. Incomplete, posing a threat to patient safety and care quality. Initiating data-sharing protocols with outside networks, including electronic health records (EHRs), guarantees that the providers will have full records of a patient regardless of the system in practice. Implementing common standards, including HL7 or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), can help to increase the smooth transition of information between systems and thus minimize the risk of adverse events (Miandoab et al., 2023). This action conforms to the intended agenda to enhance the outcomes of patients by guaranteeing all providers adequate and timely information.

High-level encryption in telehealth communication is essential to protect patient information. Protecting patient data requires confidentiality, and HIPAA requires that organizations implement encryption to protect such patient data from hackers or unauthorized persons. Evidence stresses that telehealth systems must guarantee end-to-end encryption via Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), recognized for its ability to resist attacks such as brute force and differential cryptanalysis (Smid, 2021). When clients trust a provider, they enlist the professionals to take responsibility for their treatment; thus, incorporating high levels of encryption will help providers meet privacy policies and standards and foster patient allegiance.

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 4 Risk Mitigation

Further, there is a need to ensure that an organization has backup systems and proactively plans for contingencies so that in the event a system fails, the telehealth services will not be affected. Automated fail-back processes complemented by testing of backup facilities make it possible to continue with the services in case of a failure with investment in infrastructure (Agrawal et al., 2023). Kaiser Foundation Hospital should adopt such systems to continue availing care to patients or clients. These practices encompass two key aspects of ethical nature: justice, whereby the patient receives quality health services regardless of position or stage in the plan, and beneficence, whereby health services are provided without intermission to any patient. Lastly, standardized patient verification decreases the incidence of misidentification of patients through biometric or multi-factor identification.

Suleski et al. (2023) explained that cloud-based systems are a very effective approach to patient identification, which is well-embraced for the authentication and identification of patients during telemedicine consultancies. It can be used by utilizing a digital signature, SMS, or token-sharing features. This action finds the principle of non-maleficence whereby the right patient gets the right treatment, and no harm is done. Also, creating a multi-factor authentication feature enhances the security of users’ accounts from identity fraud and breaches legal implementation from HIPAA. 

Change Management Strategies

The best management change approach that can be used to drive the proposed telehealth activities is stakeholder engagement. It involves the most important stakeholder factions, such as healthcare providers, IT professionals, and other administrative staff, by making sure that they are on board in this process. This becomes critical, especially when using technology-based systems such as telehealth, which require cooperation between several departments to achieve interface compatibility and users’ conformity to technological changes. The involvement of the stakeholders is also useful in pointing out the main hurdles to the utilization of evidence and coming up with acceptable solutions, which realistically can aid in its use, enhancing the probability of implementation (Miandoab et al., 2023). 

The other important area is training and development, where organizations provide necessary employee support for job performance. Therefore, when implementing the new biometric and multi-factor authentication systems, educating the healthcare providers’ patients is important to ensure they do not resist the change. By heating up technical support and responding to concerns in the shortest time possible, healthcare organizations can improve people’s use of technology. There should be follow-up training to ensure trainers and learners are up to date with the technology being offered according to the difficulties encountered after implementing the technology (Galvin et al., 2024). 

Finally, data analysis should be utilized in the change management process. Using performance data and user feedback in combination with the number of breaches in healthcare organizations, the efficiency of the changes can be figured out. These metrics include tracking the security threats and risks and improving patient safety measures; thus, analyzing these metrics gives more insight into what needs to be changed to meet the goals for increasing security and improving patient safety (Rapin et al., 2023). This strategy applies in a telehealth context because many telehealth technologies are constantly being developed, and there is always a need to check how well the telehealth system works and whether the technology complies with the current healthcare legal frameworks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, addressing the identified risks in telehealth implementation at Kaiser Foundation Hospital through targeted mitigation strategies will enhance patient safety, data security, and care quality. By implementing effective change management strategies, such as stakeholder engagement, training, and data analysis, the organization can ensure the successful adoption of telehealth systems. These actions will align with legal requirements, foster trust, and improve overall healthcare outcomes.

References

Agrawal, V., Agrawal, S., Bomanwar, A., Dubey, T., & Jaiswal, A. (2023). Exploring the risks, benefits, advances, and challenges in internet integration in medicine with the advent of 5G technology: A comprehensive review. Cureus, 15(11). https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.48767 

Ansarian, M., & Baharlouei, Z. (2023). Applications and challenges of telemedicine: Privacy-Preservation as a case study. Archives of Iranian Medicine, 26(11), 654–661. https://doi.org/10.34172/aim.2023.96 

Edemekong, P. F., Haydel, M. J., & Annamaraju, P. (2024). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500019/ 

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 4 Risk Mitigation

Fields, B. G. (2020). Regulatory, legal, and ethical considerations of telemedicine. Sleep Medicine Clinics, 15(3), 409–416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsmc.2020.06.004 

Galvin, E., Desselle, S., Gavin, B., McNicholas, F., Cullinan, S., & Hayden, J. (2024). Training service users in the use of telehealth: A scoping review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 26. https://doi.org/10.2196/57586 

Maria, A. R. J., Serra, H., & Heleno, B. (2022). Teleconsultations and their implications for health care: A qualitative study on patients’ and physicians’ perceptions. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 162(1), 104751. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104751 

Miandoab, A. T., Soltani, T. S., Jodati, A., & Hachesu, P. R. (2023). Interoperability of heterogeneous health information systems: A systematic literature review. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-023-02115-5 

Rapin, J., Gendron, S., Mabire, C., & Dubois, C.-A. (2023). Feedback on clinical team performance: how does it work, in what contexts, for whom, and for what changes? A critical realist qualitative multiple case study. BMC Health Services Research, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-023-09402-x 

Smid, M. E. (2021). Development of the advanced encryption standard. Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 126(126024). https://doi.org/10.6028/jres.126.024

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 4 Risk Mitigation

Suleski, T., Ahmed, M., Yang, W., & Wang, E. (2023). A review of multi-factor authentication in the internet of healthcare things. Digital Health, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20552076231177144