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302-205-0504HIPAA explained in plain English, without jargon or scare tactics. Education, not legal advice.
Short answer: yes, but only with a tool whose vendor will sign a business associate agreement. HIPAA does not ban AI. It governs how patient information is handled, no matter what tool is touching it.
Read articleShort answer: it depends on three things. Which email service you use, what you are actually sending, and whether you have documented what your patient chose. HIPAA does not ban email.
Read articleShort answer: three things. That they will safeguard your patients' information and use it only for the work you hired them for, that they will tell you if they have a breach, and that they will hold their own subcontractors to the same obligations.
Read articleShort answer: yes, within limits. HIPAA does not ban texting. What matters is what is in the message, whether the patient has been warned and has chosen it, and whether that choice is documented.
Read articleShort answer: the first question is not who took it. It is whether the information on it was encrypted. If it was, the data is unreadable, and under HIPAA that changes everything about what follows.
Read articleShort answer: it depends on whether you send health information electronically in connection with certain standard transactions. Not on your license, not on your diagnosis, and not on the fact that you keep clinical records.
Read articleShort answer: they are notes recording the contents of conversation during a counseling session, kept separate from the rest of the medical record. Both halves of that have to be true, or the special protection does not apply.
Read articleShort answer: nobody can quote you honestly without asking how many people touch your records, how you bill, how many vendors you use, and whether you want problems found or fixed. Anyone who names a price before asking is guessing.
Read articleShort answer: it is four questions, answered and written down. If HIPAA applies to you, it is the single document a regulator is most likely to ask for, and many small practices do not have one.
Read articleShort answer: four things. Training, access, individual logins, and offboarding. If HIPAA applies to you, the rules do not change when you grow. What changes is that they now apply to somebody who is not you.
Read articleShort answer: there is no government approved list of telehealth platforms, and no approval program at all. What matters is whether the vendor will sign a business associate agreement covering the product you actually use, and what you do with it afterwards.
Read articleA practical introduction to HIPAA compliance for small therapy practices, including risk analysis, safeguards, vendors, documentation, and next steps.
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