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Hi, everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. This is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturist. Today I want to give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for bringing this to you. Today we are going to talk about HIPAA and as it applies to reproductive healthcare. Many of you acupuncturists deal with reproductive healthcare, even for those of you that don’t in your files, in your patient’s histories, in the forms that the very patients fill out.
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There will be things regarding reproductive healthcare, like contraception, pregnancy management, fertility, sterilization, and also sexual health. Just as a reminder of what reproductive healthcare means in the context of hipaa, slideshow, please. Okay, so how fast things change. Literally at the beginning of the year, we had some new laws regarding reproductive healthcare, and now, like just within the last few weeks on June 18th, it’s changed.
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Some of those things have changed for most of the states out there, but not all of them. And this is what we’re gonna talk about. And again, things change very quickly. Sometimes you really need to stay on top of all the HIPAA laws, new, old, and the changing ones as they’re coming down the pipe.
Strengthening reproductive healthcare privacy under the new HIPAA privacy rule. Now, again, like I talked about a little bit before, there was the new requirements that we talked about in December and also in January, but now there’s some new requirements regarding attestations, or shall I say, some things you may not need to do, and we’re gonna talk about the action steps and specifically how it applies to you and how it applies to compliance and relationship to hipaa.
Here’s what happened on June 18th, so just a few weeks ago, a US district court judge for the Northern District of Texas, federal judge has invalidated the 2024 HIPAA reproductive health modifications to the privacy rule decision is immediate and it applies nationwide. This is how we’re saying there can be a law, and then several months later that law no longer exists, or you no longer have to do certain or specific things within that particular law.
The Texas judge, this is what the Texas judge said. He said that HHS had overstepped its bounds, and he cited three main legal issues, which we’ll just talk about briefly. One, the rule unlawfully restricted public health laws. Two, it redefined terms like person and public health in ways that exceeded the federal authority.
And three, it addressed politically charged issues like abortion without clear congressional approval. A violation of a major questions doctrine. And again, let me just remind you what the reproductive healthcare law that I was talking about just a little bit before, things like contraception, pregnancy management fertility, sterilization, sexual health.
So those was what specifically they stated was fell under that umbrella of reproductive healthcare law. However, some of the things we had to do, like I said earlier, like attestation statements. Most of us will not need to do any longer. Okay, so let’s just keep going here. HIPAA related entities, covered entities like you and your business associates.
Remember, business associates are folks that you do business with or basically people that have access to your patient’s information or basically anything that you have that you share with somebody else in relationship to a business associate for protective health information have to follow state laws.
Regarding that particular reproductive health. All right, so now let me say this. It does get a little confusing. It gets confusing for everybody. Federal law. There’s federal law as we know, and then there’s state law. When it comes to hipaa, actually state laws will supersede or become in addition to.
Federal law. So you can have a federal law, but your particular state may have it more strict, it may be more detailed, or you may have to do additional things regarding that particular law. So we always say stay on top of your state laws as well. So in the absence of hipaa, reproductive health rule, some states, not only many states are increasing.
HIPAA privacy protections for the residents. So here’s some of the states that you need to pay attention to that will likely, or I wouldn’t, going to suggest to you to keep doing what you’re supposed to be doing in regards to reproductive healthcare and providing attestation statements, which we’ll get into just a second.
So anyways, New York, California. Washington, Nevada, and Connecticut, and there may be some more to come. We’ll see. How does this impact you? Here’s the thing. Covered entities, at least most of them in those state or in most states, are no longer required to seek attestations from requesters regarding protected healthcare or rather protective health information related to reproductive healthcare.
So what does that mean? Basically because of this new law. The states that I didn’t mention, you follow the federal law, okay? You do not have to provide an attestation statement if someone asked for those certain things regarding reproductive healthcare. All right? What that means is if you did what you were supposed to at the beginning of the year with all the new updates that came down the pipe and you change your privacy notices, now you would actually take that out.
’cause now it no longer applies to you. But if you’re in those states that are going to continue to follow this. You need to keep it in there. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, make sure you reach out to me so we can make, tell you the things that you need to know regarding this and many other things that changed at the beginning of the year.
So double check your state now, navigation or navigate the prohibition on disclosing protected health information for the purpose of investigating or imposing liability unlawful reproductive healthcare imposed by your state. Let me put that in some different words here for you. If you have patient files, which we have patient files that do in fact many times contain the very things that I detailed regarding the big umbrella of reproductive healthcare, and if somebody like from law enforcement or a judicial BA branch, we listed these things before, requested that information, we were supposed to by law actually send them this model attestation form, which basically said, Hey, listen, we’re sending you some information here.
You have to fill this out. Actually, let me reverse here. We’re not gonna send you this information, this protective healthcare information until you fill this form out and basically promise to us that you’re not going to punish anybody for whatever was in those particular files regarding reproductive healthcare.
So now, because that federal state judge said what he said. Most states no longer have to do this. All righty? So make sure you pay attention to your state. This is why we always talk about hipaa. It’s not like you can just do HIPAA and you can just fill out this manual and you’re good to go and you just sit back and you forget about.
It’s constantly evolving and it’s constantly changing as you can see and what happened in Texas is just a real simple reminder that a single court ruling can unravel. A lot of the new guidelines that were literally just presented and required six months ago. It’s evolving from reproductive privacy rules and think about this, cybersecurity, look at ai, artificial intelligence, and all the new things that are coming down with computer systems and privacy and cybersecurity threats and phishing.
It gets really scary at times. This is why. Monthly training isn’t optional. It’s your, it’s literally your lifeline such that you have to stay on top of these things. And I’ll be very clear, it’s not like the government says, Hey, by law, you have to absolutely do one monthly HIPAA training a month.
That’s not what they say. What they say is you need to do continuous training throughout the year for yourself and to all of your employees and even to your business associates, believe it or not. What I’ve also heard other people say that teach the things that we teach is that even the government suggests that you do HIPAA training.
To about two times a month. Now, is that a law? It’s not a law, but it’s what we’ve heard for suggestions. We step back and say, Hey, you should be doing things at least once a month. All right, so staying informed protects your license. It’s your patience and your peace of mind. And believe me, if you don’t have these things dialed in like you’re supposed to and someone comes knocking on the door for an audit, it’s something that you don’t want to go through because I talk to doctors all the time.
I talk to acupuncturists all the time. That get scared because they don’t have the things that they should have. So it’s really easy to get the things that you need to have, and I’ll talk to you about that here in just a second. HIPAA compliance, again, you can’t just check a box and be like, okay, cool, I’m HIPAA compliant, or fill out a particular form.
It can get a little bit involved. It’s about staying ready for whatever comes next. Keep learning. Keep updating the things. Stay fearless. We want you to be fearless so you can focus on your patients. That’s why you became an acupuncturist, is to focus on your patients. We can help you with the HIPAA side of things, so what are some of the next steps that you can do?
Couple things here. HIPAA checklist, if you’re wondering like, ah, I wonder if I’m HIPAA compliant, or I wonder if I’m even close to being HIPAA compliant, you can scan the QR code and get this checklist, or you can just look at it here and go through these questions. You can’t answer these questions, or if you’re not doing these things on these questions, you’re not HIPAA compliant.
It’s not worth the risk. So if you want to, you can set up a demo with us, where we can talk to you, we can show you the HIPAA compliance program that we have and how easy it is to navigate through this. Just go to go dot fearless provider.com/demo. You can scan the QR code here as well.
Sometimes acupuncture, you just wanna get started. So you can go to ww dot fearless acupuncturist.com to get started. Or. A lot of times people just wanna reach out and ask me questions, and I am more than happy to answer any questions that you may have, and you can contact me there at that email, Dr.
perry@betterhipaablueprint.com. If you have any questions, like I said, reach out to us. We are absolutely more than happy to sit down and talk to you and spend some time with you and clear up any questions or confusion that HIPAA presents with many of the times. In the meantime, everybody have an amazing day and we will talk to you soon.