HIPAA, Encryption, and the Thorny, Not-Always-Clear Regulations Around Email and Texting

Please join us at our upcoming webinar:

HIPAA, Encryption, and the Thorny, Not-Always-Clear Regulations Around Email and Texting

Friday, June 17th, 2022, 12PM-1:00PM

One (1) Ethics Continuing Education Credit

Presented by Dr. Susan C. Litton

Please see the Program Brochure for details.

• Description: If you work for an agency, you’ve likely been drilled on exactly what you steps you need to take in your particular job to help assure your organization is HIPAA-compliant. However, it’s a bit harder for those in private practice, who are responsible for all aspects of HIPAA-compliance – even if they are solo practitioners and have no one working for or with them. In the beginning, some solo or group practitioners decided to try to avoid HIPAA altogether by not doing things that would make them Covered Entities (primarily avoiding filing any insurance claims electronically.) However, partly as a result of the increased usage of digital tools that resulted from COVID, that’s less likely to be possible today. This workshop will explain why. We’ll also cover a relatively easy, reasonably straightforward way to accomplish most tasks required by HIPAA. Yes, there’s still a bit of work involved, but if you have a set of guidelines to point the way, it can help immensely. We’ll discuss how EHRs can help with that – although our guidelines for how to become HIPAA compliant will also work for paper-pencil practitioners. We’ll also cover BAAs (Business Associate Agreements) and why they really ARE worth having. Finally, the topics of using both email and texting with patients are SO complex – and often, seemingly contradictory, that we’ll go into that with a fine-toothed comb. You’ll leave knowing what to do – and perhaps more importantly, what NOT to do with those modes of communication.

  Learning objectives:

• 1.     Participants will be able to name two reasons why a psychologist might be a Covered Entity – even if they are strictly private pay and have never filed an electronic insurance claim.
• 2.     Participants will be able to list two main things BAAs do that are important for clinicians.
• 3.     Participants will be able to list the inherent problem with email products that use only TLS encryption and to provide two examples of types of email products that are considered to be 100% end-to-end encrypted.
• 4.     Participants will be able to explain the difference between asking patients to sign a release for non-encrypted email vs. adhering to their wishes should they ask you to send non-encrypted email.