Texting and E-mail with Patients Under HIPAA — Meeting Patient Rights and Avoiding Breaches

Tuesday, October 17, 2020 from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM (EDT)

 

• This session will focus on the rights of individuals to communicate in the manner they desire, and how a medical office can decide what is an acceptable process for communications with individuals. The session will explain how to discuss communications options with individuals so that you can best meet their needs and desires, while preserving their rights under the rules.

• With the new HIPAA random audit program now getting under way, and increases in enforcement actions following breaches, now is the time to ensure your organization is in compliance with the regulations and meeting the e-mail and texting communication needs and desires of its providers and patients. You need the proper privacy protections for health information, and the necessary documented policies and procedures, as well as documentation of any actions taken pursuant to your policies and procedures. Your policies and procedures may need revisions to maintain compliance in areas such as individual access of records and breach notification. And, of course, you will need to train your staff in all the new policies and procedures.

Why should you attend:

• Now that requirements for allowing patients electronic access to their health information are in effect, and as patients increasingly come to depend on electronic communications, there are new demands for communication via e-mail and texting. Patients don't want to bother with secure Web-site-based solutions, they just want to use the tools they already use for communication, and they have a right to communicate how they wish.

• How can HIPAA requirements for privacy and security be reconciled with patient requests for information provided by e-mail and text messages? This session will discuss the differences between professional communications and patient communications, and how they must be treated to best serve patients, most efficiently enable communications, and remain within the bounds of HIPAA compliance.
  
   

  Areas Covered in the Session:

• Find out the ways that patients want to use their e-mail and texting to communicate with providers, and the ways providers want to use e-mail and texting to enable better patient care

• Learn what are the risks of using e-mail and texting, what can go wrong, and what can result when it does

• Find out about HIPAA requirements for access and patient preferences, as well as the requirements to protect PHI

• Learn how to use an information security management process to evaluate risks and make decisions about how best to protect PHI and meet patient needs and desires

• Find out what policies and procedures you should have in place for dealing with e-mail and texting, as well as any new technology
  
   

  Who Will Benefit:

• Compliance Director

• CEO

• CFO

• Speaker Profile 

  Jim Sheldon-Dean is the founder and director of compliance services at Lewis Creek Systems, LLC, a Vermont-based consulting firm founded in 1982, providing information privacy and security regulatory compliance services to a wide variety of health care entities. 

• Privacy Officer

• Security Officer

• Information Systems Manager

• HIPAA Officer

• Chief Information Officer

• Health Information Manager

• Healthcare Counsel/lawyer

• Office Manager

Speaker Profile 

Jim Sheldon-Dean is the founder and director of compliance services at Lewis Creek Systems, LLC, a Vermont-based consulting firm founded in 1982, providing information privacy and security regulatory compliance services to a wide variety of health care entities. 

Sheldon-Dean serves on the HIMSS Information Systems Security Workgroup, has co-chaired the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange Privacy and Security Workgroup, and is a recipient of the WEDI 2011 Award of Merit. He is a frequent speaker regarding HIPAA and information privacy and security compliance issues at seminars and conferences, including speaking engagements at numerous regional and national healthcare association conferences and conventions and the annual NIST/OCR HIPAA Security Conference in Washington, D.C.