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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi everybody. This is Dr. Perry Barnhill with a Fearless Acupuncturist, and today we are gonna talk about something that is so important. There’s some new HIPAA changes that are coming down the pipe regarding reproductive healthcare. A lot of you are very much involved with fertility and reproduction and pregnancy and things like that, so make sure you stay tuned for this.
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Also big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for having us here. We are pleased to give you the information that you need to have now Slideshow please. Okay, here we go. This is all about strengthening reproductive healthcare under the privacy and the new HIPAA privacy rule. So there’s new requirements.
Just like I said, there are forms, and when I talk about attestation, I am specifically referring to a form that we’re gonna need to have and send out before we send out any information. We’ll get in some details on that and some action steps so you know exactly what it is you need to do. Let’s talk about some of these new changes.
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Now, if you’ll remember, maybe you don’t know, but you need to know they are, there are seven new laws for HIPAA in 2025. We’re not gonna get any of these, but they’ve actually added to that, believe it or not. So they have talked about some modifications to the privacy rule. Specifically to better protect reproductive healthcare privacy.
We’re gonna define what this reproductive healthcare privacy is, and a lot of you are involved with this. What it does is this, it prohibits use or disclosure of PHI protected health information. Remember, these are the records we have on our patients, including our intake forms. All righty? So even if some of you may not be involved with this, which I know a lot of you are.
Still, a lot of this information is actually on the intake forms that the patients fill out when they come to the office. So what it does is this prohibits user or disclosure, PHI, solely to investigate or penalize lawful reproductive healthcare. It requires this form I’m talking about, so it requires and obtaining written attestations before we disclose this reproductive healthcare.
Information or records in certain circumstances, or I’ll talk about certain scenarios that you, we will go over and covered entities, which is all of us have to update our notice of patient privacy practices accordingly. What is reproductive healthcare? This reproductive healthcare is a very broad definition, and federal registry. This is some of the stuff that comes from the Federal Registry to help better define what reproductive healthcare is, and it’s a exclusive list. What I’m going to do is, I’m just gonna go through the main things here. You can read all the details behind it, but it’s contraception, it’s management of pre pregnancy, which a lot of your doing.
It’s fertility and infertility again and family planning. It’s still sterilization issues. And sexual health to include many things there. So make sure you understand what this is. Who is affected? Guess what? All of us as healthcare providers are affected. All of us are healthcare clearinghouses are affected, affected health plans.
So all insurance companies are business associates. You know the people that have access to your records, they’re affected. So you need to make sure they’re aware of these things. Also, through your business associate agreements. Here are the situations that require attestation. So I’ll just summarize a little bit.
Reproductive healthcare, if these scenarios occur, meaning these folks ask for records from your patients or from you that you have on your patients and your records re have. Any of that reproductive healthcare definitions on it, or in it, including intake forms. You’re gonna have to send out the form, the attestation form.
So here are the scenarios, or here are some examples of if these people ask for records that contain that reproductive healthcare, you’ll have to send out one of those attestations Health oversight activities. Again, you’re gonna validate that the disclosures are not. Used for punishing lawful care.
That’s how You do it through the attestation statement. Judicial administrative proceedings confirm that the request is not investigative or punitive in nature. The way you do this is through that form, which we’ll talk about here in a second, and also law enforce enforcement requests. So law enforcement, you have to also use this attestation form before you release any of this information, or at least information that has reproductive healthcare in it.
Coroners medical examiners here, again, you’ll have to use this form as well before you release the information. We have a form I should say we, I’m referring to the government. I’m obviously not the government, but we’re talking about a form, they call it the model attestation form. So why not use the form that they actually say we can use, and this is the requirement, it’s the required step we have to do before we disclose reproductive healthcare information or records, and it ensures that whoever’s asking for it.
So those scenarios I just showed you, like the law enforcement, coroners, medical examiners. We send this form to them, they gotta fill it out and send it back to us, and basically saying they’re not gonna do anything or punish them by law for doing the things in the reproductive definitions that I showed you.
Here’s the form, and basically what this form is this, and I know you probably can’t see this on the slides, but the next slide, I’ll have a link for you so you can download this form for yourself, for your offices, and for your staff. But basically, this is the form that we would send out. So let’s say law enforcement, here’s a scenario.
Law enforcement, like I said, in those scenarios, they ask for protected health information from what on. That you have in record of one of your patients. And those records happen to include some of those reproductive definitions in there. So before we send them any information, we have to send this form out and they have to fill it out.
And basically it says that they’re not gonna use any of the information that they acquire from your patient records to punish the patient. Alrighty. Here is the link so you can get this form. I’ll bring the sync up again here a little bit later, but you can just scan it and then I’ll get you right to the link.
Lots of things you gotta do here. So let’s go over some of the main ones. You have to document everything, as always, as you always know, with everything we do in our offices. Hipaa, reproductive healthcare obviously is a big one. In fact, it’s mandatory. We have to keep records of our policy updates, so make sure you keep a record of this.
In fact, keep a record of this for your training log. This could be something you can show your staff, the test station, that form that we have to have. You gotta keep that on file disclosures. And what I mean by disclosures is, believe it or not, every single time that we release information on a patient, we have to record that because patients have a right to come back and say, Hey, I want to see everybody that you ever sent my information to.
So we gotta have that readily accessible. We have to train, we have to educate the staff, and here’s what this looks like. Identifying protected health information that Reque requests or PHI requests that will trigger the use of that form. Kinda like we talked about the reproductive healthcare. Talk to your staff.
Distinguish lawful reproductive healthcare from investigating request. So when those people are asking, and I say those people, the people that I was talking about in those scenarios, ask for reproductive healthcare, PHI on your patients. A testation form goes out, so you have to know how to locate and use the form and document the disclosures, and of course, you have to retain the testation forms to keep copies of everything.
Make sure you train your staff on this. In fact, a lot of officers are deciding and telling the staff. If you have any requests for protected health information from any of those people, let me know so you all can check it over and make sure that attestation form is sent out and then sent back to you before you release any of that information.
You have to update your notice of patient privacy practices. That form the big old packet that we’re supposed to have in our office for all the patient’s rights. Those things have to be readily available for patients. And again, it must reflect. So there’s gonna be changes in there if you had those forms, which you all need to have those prior to 2025.
Guess what? Those forms are no longer good. So you have to get a new, you have to get new notice of patient privacy policies to provide patients with clear and updated information about their rights and how their information is protected. All to align with the updates of the final rule guidelines.
Basically all to align with everything that’s come down the pipe with these new laws. Here’s some next steps for you. Here’s another. Opportunity to download that QR code if you’d like to, so you can go right to it and get that model attestation form, which you have to have. You need to have this in your manuals.
One of the things that we’ve done is we’ve put together a HIPAA compliance checklist. So you can go through, look at this checklist. ’cause a lot of people, they think, oh, I think I’m compliant, or I, maybe I have this form, I have that form, but maybe you’re not really sure. Maybe you didn’t know. You need to do a bunch of assessments and analysises throughout the year.
So we’ve created this form here, just this checklist. You can go through it, check it out, and if you can’t answer these questions or if you’re not doing the things on this form, then guess what? You’re not compliant and you do not wanna be in that position. Believe me, don’t be in that position. Get it dialed in.
Protect yourself. If you’d like to, you can schedule a demo or you can just get started. You can go to this website here. You can schedule demo, go dot fearless provider.com/demo. Of course, you can scan the QR code there to your right. If you just wanna get started with the HIPAA program, we have everything you need for hipaa, all the forms, all the trainings.
We have ’em in videos, we have downloads, we have closed caption, we have transcripts. We have. Everything in there to make it learn as easily as possible for you and your staff, or I’m more than happy to talk to you. You can contact me at Dr. perry@betterhipaablueprint.com. Again, thank you all so much for being here.
We hope you hope the best for all of you. In spite of all these changes. Just make sure you go out there, get the process going, and make sure you have this in play. In the meantime, have an amazing day, everybody.