The organization I volunteered with was Capital Caring. I chose this organization because it helps people, especially the elderly, by providing support to those in need. Helping people is what I like to do and Capital Caring gave me this opportunity. Capital Caring began helping the community in 1977 in Washington DC and was founded by Dr. Josefina Magno. Dr. Magno founded Capital Caring because she realized that people living with serious illnesses needed substantial, sustained care. Capital Caring started as a small team in a single office in a church. Capital Caring is a non-profit organization. It relies on Medicare Part A, Medicaid and other insurance to operate. Capital Caring not only provides care for carers, but also provides palliative care, hospice and counselling. Hospice care focuses more on medical, emotional and spiritual support of the patient's life. Palliative care focuses more on patient- and family-centered care that optimizes the patient's quality of life by anticipating, preventing and treating their suffering. At Capital Caring, they provide bereavement services which is what they call counseling. They provide grief counseling to anyone in the community who has experienced the death of a loved one. The services they offer can be found wherever patients call home, whether at home, in nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities, or even in places like shelters or prisons. Capital Caring is run with the help of many people. They have people who have some type of degree including doctors, medical directors, nurses, case managers, pharmacist and art/music therapist. They also have volunteers who can help Capital Caring patients in some way. Volunteers can help out in hospice and palliative care, but are not able to do certain jobs like Capital Caring professionals. In all locations that are part of Capital Caring there are approximately 800 employees and 1,400 volunteers. Since Capital Caring began serving the community in 1977, it has grown over the years. Over the years they have managed to expand their facilities into seven cities in Virginia, one city in Maryland, and the District of Columbia, and they still hope to expand them further in the near future. They have also increased the number of shelter centers in the district to four. Every day they help around 1,200 patients, a figure that continues to increase every year. Capital Caring is a nationally recognized leader in the hospice care industry and among the ten largest hospice care organizations in the area. Overall Capital Caring has grown and continues to grow over the years. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One big issue that Capital Caring has stated multiple times is patient confidentiality. When I had to fill out the necessary paperwork to become a volunteer, many of the documents involved patient confidentiality. While volunteering at Capital Caring, I received a patient's medical record number and some basic information about each patient I saw each day. This is why Capital Caring has all of its volunteers sign many medical confidentiality documents for all patients so that their information is not given to anyone else. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act known as HIPAA is what protects patient health information. HIPPA was created to help employees between jobs improve their insurance coverage portability and accountabilityhealthcare. HIPAA was signed into law by Bill Clinton on August 21, 1996. On April 14, 2003, the Department of Health and Human Services created the Privacy Act. Privacy laws help permit the use and disclosure of identifiable health information and maintain the integrity of private data. When privacy legislation was created it allowed for new rights that patients didn't have before. For example, patients have the right to obtain a paper copy of their medical record, the right to amend the medical record to correct errors, and the right to prevent details of Pateint treatments from being disclosed to other health insurers. Two years after the creation of the Privacy Rule, the Security Rule was introduced. The security rule ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information. To keep health information protected, security regulations must include the implementation of administrative, technical and physical safeguards. In 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services also created the Enforcement Rule which gives them the authority to sanction covered entities found to be failing to comply with the Privacy and Security Rules. It also gives them the right to pursue criminal charges for serious violations of HIPAA regulations. The HITECH Act was signed into law in 2009 to introduce new requirements for EHRs and to allow healthcare providers to begin making greater use of EHRs. With the creation of the HITECH Act, came the creation of the Breach Notification Rule. This rule requires that if a breach of patient health information occurs, then it must be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services, and that if patient information has been exposed or compromised, they must notify it within 60 days. In 2013, the latest addition to HIPAA, the Omnibus Final Rule, was added. The Omnibus Final Rule was signed into law to help fill many gaps in the original HIPAA laws. For example, all of the rules under HIPAA were changed in some way to make it clear to those who had doubts about who HIPAA applied to. Over the centuries it has been more difficult to maintain confidentiality because now not only your primary care doctor sees your health information, but also doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other hospital employees. Back then healthcare was provided by a single individual, but now it's different. It's different because healthcare isn't provided by a single individual, it's provided by many people. For example, patients are now seen by a doctor who is part of a team with hundreds of other people who contribute to helping that doctor provide health care to thousands of Americans. Sometimes there are people who cannot afford to pay for healthcare and ask for financial assistance, which leads to third-party payers needing access to the patient's medical records to help them pay for healthcare. Another problem with confidentiality is what can and cannot be kept private. For example, if a patient tells their doctor that they intend to commit suicide, then a doctor may share this information with the patient's doctors because it is something serious. Telling his relatives that the doctor can act accordingly and help the patient so that this does not happen. Doctors build professional relationships with their patients because they need to be able to know their patients so they can provide them with healthcare. At Capital Caring, volunteers could carry out companion work, also known as sui workpatients, or administrative work. Both of these needs would require you to see patients, but the main difference was that doing Companion Care would mean seeing a patient for as long as you want and for as many days a week as you want; with administrative work, you would see multiple patients for about 10-15 minutes just to check on how they were doing. I wanted to do companion care because I would only see the same patient I was assigned to. This would help me bond more with whatever patient I had; but since being a volunteer requires a long process of not only paperwork but also basic screening, tuberculosis (TB) screening training and more, I haven't been able to do much chaperoneing due to the time lapse . I had to take care of both my partner's care and administrative work. Depending on the type of volunteering, it will depend on where you volunteer. For administrative work, I went to the main office where my supervisor, Roxana, was located and saw several patients there and for Companion Care I went to Birmingham Green in Manassas. Since Capital Caring has different locations, you could choose which one to go to to volunteer, I chose the Manassas location since it was closest. For the first time I volunteered, I went for four days and stayed an hour each day; then I started going there once a week for an hour. For the first patient I was assigned to, I watched over her while her daughter went out to run some errands, played hymns, and held her hand when she was awake. She mostly slept when I was there, but when she was awake, he sometimes read her the Bible. I felt I was suited to volunteer at Capital Caring because I was a very patient and caring person towards the patients I interacted with. This has helped make it easier for me to be the type of volunteer Capital Caring is looking for. I also felt I could fit in with my supervisor, Roxana, because we both shared things in common and besides taking care of patients we were both very nice people, so we managed to get along. Some personal skills I brought to Capital Caring when I volunteered were responsibility, punctuality, and a good attitude. Being a volunteer means having a lot of responsibility for the hour you spend with your patient. Being on time for the scheduled time to volunteer is very important at Capital Caring because, if you are late or don't show up on the days you are supposed to volunteer, the patient may think that you don't want to be there. This can make them feel different types of emotions. For example, they may have a good attitude towards the patients you see can help you make your patients feel that you value them and the time you spend with them. What I wanted to get out of being a volunteer was to see that my volunteer work was helpful to the patients assigned to me and made a difference to them when I was there. For the first lady I was assigned to, I made a difference because she had someone who cared for her until the end. As a volunteer my role has helped bring benefits to the community by giving them another volunteer they are looking for. As I mentioned in my other paragraphs, Capital Caring is always looking for volunteers to help the community by volunteering to care for patients who don't have a family member to care for them 24/7 Based on my volunteering experience, I have learned that you need to be very patient with the elderly. Capital Caring says you have to be patient, but they don't mention how patient you have to be. Please note: this is just an example. Get.