Access the on-demand webinar here.

This webinar is part of the Navigating Telehealth for FQHCs During COVID-19 webinar series and can be purchased individually or as part of the series. To purchase the full series, click here.

As health care providers either accelerated their plans to adopt telehealth or dramatically expanded their current telehealth capacity in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency, they may have inadvertently increased their compliance risks related to patient privacy and security. 

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced some flexibility in the HIPAA Rules during the public health emergency, including waiving the requirement for covered entities to execute a business associate agreement requirement for certain video platforms and texting applications. Still, other HIPAA requirements remain in place and enforceable, including the HIPAA Privacy Rule requirement that covered entities provide patients with notice as to how their health information will be used and disclosed and the HIPAA Security Rule requirement that covered entities regularly conduct a security risk analysis and develop risk mitigation strategies.  As patient information travels to and through the internet, on employee and patient personal devices, the potential for breaches and security incidents increases. 

On this webinar, we will review the major privacy and security risks related to adopting and expanding telehealth services in the health center context. Presenters will review the applicable federal laws and regulations, including HIPAA and 42 CFR Part 2, and identify key compliance considerations when identifying telehealth vendors, negotiating contracts and business associate agreements, notifying patients about telehealth, training health center staff members and adopting remote monitoring applications and technologies.