Healthcare employees' perception on information privacy concerns

Abstract

Healthcare organisations process massive amount of electronic medical records (EMR) utilised by their employees. Having given privileged access to sensitive and valuable patient information in the EMR, healthcare employees may cause privacy breaches, which may lead to detrimental consequences. Therefore, it is vital to impose particular attention to healthcare employees' concerns on privacy in the use of EMR. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that influence information privacy concerns (IPC), subsequently to design and evaluate the proposed model. An explanatory study was employed in the research with a Malaysian hospital under the Statutory Body as a case study. The unit of analysis comprised of healthcare employees. The quantitative data were analysed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), ascertained only privacy awareness was positively related to IPC and also mediate the relationship between privacy policy and IPC, demonstrating the significance of privacy policy in elevating privacy awareness. Hence, this study contributed by validating IPC in Malaysian healthcare setting, subsequently facilitates the healthcare organisations to understand IPC from employees' perspective in ensuring the compliance with Personal Data Protection Act 2010. In addition, healthcare organisations should deem upon inculcating pertinent awareness initiatives among their employees in upholding IPC in the use of EMR.