Which principle ensures that a patient's personal health information remains protected?

The principle that ensures a patient's personal health information remains protected is confidentiality. Confidentiality refers specifically to the ethical and legal duty to protect patient information from disclosure to unauthorized parties. This principle is foundational in healthcare, instilling trust between patients and providers that sensitive health data will not be shared without consent.

In practice, confidentiality encompasses various measures, including controlled access to patient records and training for healthcare staff on the importance of protecting personal health information. This principle is critical in maintaining the integrity of the patient-provider relationship and is a cornerstone of healthcare ethics and regulations, such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the United States.

While privacy, integrity, and security are related concepts, they each serve distinct roles. Privacy generally refers to the right of patients to control their personal information, integrity emphasizes the accuracy and completeness of health information, and security focuses on the measures taken to protect information from unauthorized access or breaches. Those concepts complement confidentiality but do not explicitly define the specific obligation to keep health information undisclosed.