HCM-515: Health Law and Ethics
Module 10: Critical Thinking Assignment
Medical Privacy Survey (110 points)
The Ministry of Health has developed rules, regulations, and standard operating procedures concerning telehealth services. Review these documents and draft a survey you can provide to patients to determine whether the organization is following these requirements.
Address the following requirements in the survey:
- Draft at least 10 survey questions.
- Draft questions related to medical privacy and telehealth services.
- Include questions that will lead to determining whether the facility is following the Standard Operating Procedures.
- Include a paragraph with each survey question detailing how you feel this question will help improve patient privacy regarding telehealth services in your country.
Your paper should meet the following structural requirements:
- Three to four pages in length, not including the cover sheet and reference page.
- Formatted according to APA 7th edition and Saudi Electronic University writing standards.
- Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of four scholarly articles. Two of these sources may be from the class readings, textbook, or lectures, but the other two must be external. The Saudi Digital Library is a good place to find these references.
You are strongly encouraged to submit all assignments to the Turnitin Originality Check prior to submitting them to your instructor for grading. If you are unsure how to submit an assignment to the Originality Check tool, review the Turnitin Originality Check Student Guide.
Sample Answer (Preview)
The following is a partial sample answer showing the approach, structure and referencing expected for this brief. It covers approximately 25–30% of the full 3–4 page (about 960-word) paper. Sources are cited in APA 7th edition style.
Introduction
Telehealth expanded rapidly in Saudi Arabia during COVID-19 through Ministry of Health (MOH) applications such as Seha and Mawid (Alghamdi et al., 2020). The national telehealth rules require patient consent, identity checks, confidentiality and full documentation (National Health Information Center [NHIC], 2021), and the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) classifies health data as sensitive (Personal Data Protection Law, 2021, Art. 1). The survey below asks patients whether these requirements were met during their last telehealth visit.
Patient Telehealth Privacy Survey
Question 1: Before your telehealth consultation began, were you asked for your informed consent, and was it recorded? (Yes / No / Not sure)
The executive rules state that informed consent must be recorded before any telehealth activity (NHIC, 2021, Rule 3.1.17), and the PDPL does not allow personal data to be processed without consent except in limited cases (Personal Data Protection Law, 2021, Art. 5). A high number of “No” answers would show that the facility is skipping this step, so it could retrain staff and add a mandatory consent screen to its platform.
Question 2: Did the clinician confirm your identity before discussing your health information? (Yes / No / Not sure)
Clinicians must have sufficient evidence to identify the patient before a telehealth activity (NHIC, 2021, Rule 3.1.13). Without this check, results could be disclosed to the wrong person. Houser et al. (2023) identify data security weaknesses as a major telehealth privacy risk, and identity verification is one of the simplest controls…
[End of preview] The remaining sections are included in the full solution, which is available on order. They cover Questions 3–10 (private consultation space, recording of sessions, secure platforms, data sharing and storage, breach notification, the right to refuse telehealth, documentation in the medical record and complaints), each with its supporting paragraph, and the conclusion.
References
Alghamdi, S. M., Alqahtani, J. S., & Aldhahir, A. M. (2020). Current status of telehealth in Saudi Arabia during COVID-19. Journal of Family and Community Medicine, 27(3), 208–211. https://doi.org/10.4103/jfcm.jfcm_295_20
Houser, S. H., Flite, C. A., & Foster, S. L. (2023). Privacy and security risk factors related to telehealth services – A systematic review. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 20(1), Article 1f. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9860467/
National Health Information Center. (2021). The governing rules of telehealth in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Executive rules (Version 2.6). Saudi Health Council. https://nhic.gov.sa/standards/Telehealth/the-governing-rules-of-telehealth-english-executive-rules.pdf
Personal Data Protection Law, Royal Decree No. M/19 (2021) (Saudi Arabia), as amended by Royal Decree No. M/148 (2023). https://sdaia.gov.sa/en/SDAIA/about/Documents/PersonalDataProtectionLaw.pdf
