Which measure protects the integrity of electronic health record data?

• A. Automatic log out
• B. WebQuest
• C. Authentication
• D. Password expiration policy

Answer: (A)

Maintaining data integrity means preventing unauthorized or unintended changes to patient records. Automatic log out directly helps with this by ending a user’s session after a period of inactivity. When the session is ended, someone else can’t pick up where the previous user left off and alter records without re-authenticating. This reduces the risk of tampering or accidental edits from an unattended workstation and makes any subsequent changes traceable to a reauthenticated user.

While authentication is essential for ensuring the person making changes is who they claim to be, and password expiration helps keep credentials secure, those measures don’t stop an active session from being used to modify data. WebQuest is unrelated to protecting EHR data integrity.