Today we are gonna talk about the 18 different types of protected health, inform information and how to relate to it in your office and how to protect it, most importantly, so that you don’t get yourselves in trouble.
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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. Good morning, good afternoon, whatever it may be for you. My name is Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Acupuncturist, and I want to give a big thanks to the American Acupuncture Council for bringing this to you. Today we are gonna talk about the 18 different types of protected health, inform information and how to relate to it in your office and how to protect it, most importantly, so that you don’t get yourselves in trouble.
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Slideshow please. Okay. Like I said, my name is Perry Barnhill. We teach hipaa. We’re certified in HIPAA certifications and compliance. Myself and Julie McLaughlin, we want to protect you. We want to educate you and we wanna defend you. So that you don’t get yourselves in trouble with HIPAA or with the government.
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So we’re gonna talk about some of the things that could potentially get yourselves in hot water and how to prevent those. Like I said earlier, we’re gonna talk about different types of protected health information and sometimes you may hear me say EPHI, and all that means is. Electronic protected health information.
This is the information that we have with our patients in our devices, on our computers, on our laptops, and things such as that. So believe it or not, there are 18 different types of protected health information of which we would literally go through. Each and every one of them, because there’s many of ’em you would never think are actually considered PHI.
So let’s talk about that kind of a little quiz here. We like to call the fearless quiz. What do you think are some of the different types of protected health information that you have with your patients? I’ll give you a little clue to get you started here. We all know, or most of us realize that the patient’s name would be considered part of the protective health information.
What about some other things? Just for a second, start. Start thinking about that. Okay, so we are gonna go through and we’re gonna identify each of those 18 different types. Here we go, and I’ll actually read these to you. Like I said earlier, the name of the patient or the individual or the patient’s child if you’re taking care of the child.
So obviously names are gonna be protected. Health information, an address, anything smaller than the state of residence, any date. And you know what? It includes dates that identify their onset admission, discharge date, birth dates. Even be careful with people and patients that are deceased. Okay? Bottom line is this.
As we go through these, the reason I’m bringing this to your attention is that if you are aware of all the different types of PHI, these are things that you need to be very careful about who you disclose this information to. Because if you disclose any of this information to people that shouldn’t see it or hear it, that’s actually considered a breach.
And believe it or not, we have to report the breaches. These are things we don’t want to have to do because the last thing we want to happen is have the OCR, the Office of Civil Rights, looking at all of our stuff. So let’s prevent these things in the first place so that they don’t happen. Telephone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses, even.
Social security numbers. I know most of us realize that this is a pretty important one. They’re medical record numbers. Be careful with that one. Health insurance plan, beneficiary numbers, their numbers that are on their ident, their insurance cards for identification, even account numbers, certificates or license numbers, things such as their driver’s license.
And of course, I think most of us realize that driver’s licenses can be considered PHI. The thing is that a lot of us take copies of those things, so be very careful who gets that information. Even a CPR certification number, believe it or not, passports. I think that makes sense to most of us.
But what about this one, VIN numbers or even license plate numbers? And the thing I wanna elaborate about, the license plate numbers are, many of us will do patient testimonials. Sometimes we’ll do videos of the office and in the office parking lot there’s cars. But in that same video or in the same photo is the car in your office name.
So guess what? Somebody could go online. Check that license number, and I’m not saying they were going they will, but it’s possible and the government doesn’t care whether it was possible, probable, or very likely. If it’s something that you accidentally disclosed and it was linked to the patient and their information somehow was breached, then you’re the one that gets in trouble.
So be very aware of that. Here’s some more device identifiers or serial numbers on the medical devices and treatments that you use during procedures. Web, universal, URLs, internet protocols or IP addresses, biometric identifiers, facial recognition, fingerprint scans, even tattoos. Be careful. You have to be so careful that let’s say for example, someone has a tattoo on their arm and you take a picture and maybe put it up on the internet or somehow it gets out.
And it gets linked back to your office, that could potentially be considered a breach. So be very aware of that. Full face photos, yes, if you do full face photos or you’re doing testimonials, this is where the supplies is. You have to get your patient’s authorization to do and guess what? In our HIPAA program, we have patient authorization video forms, all the things that you need to do that or any other uniquely identifi, num, numbers, characteristics, or even codes.
So here’s my big point on this. Know the different types of PHI. If you know what they are, the likelihood that you’re going to disclose those inadvertently or accidentally are gonna become much less. Therefore, the odds are reduced, that you’ll have the government in there looking at your manuals and everything like that.
That doesn’t excuse the fact to not have one. But of course, we wanna prevent accidents, if you will, from happening before they occur, and then life is much better for all of us. One of the things we talk about all the time is the importance, not just the importance, but the requirement, the legality that we’re required to do monthly, or let me say this ongoing required training for hipaa.
So we do what we call monthly HIPAA training. Each and every month we do a training. And guess what? This can be one of your monthly trainings. You can scan the QR code right there, and then what’ll pop up is this form. This form has those 18 different types of unique identifiers on there. For PHI, you sit down with your staff document.
Remember, if you don’t document it, it didn’t happen, document your training with your staff. If you have a staff, if it’s just you, it’s easy, but you still need to document that. You did the training on different types of PHI. This will help you go a long ways. In the case of an audit, it’s not the only thing you need, obviously, but it’s one of the pieces of the puzzle.
Like I said earlier, document your monthly training in your manual. You can download HIPAA compliance checklist. We have these ’cause a lot of practitioners ask us, I’m not sure if I’m have compliant. One of the things I will say, if you’re not sure, the likelihood is that you’re probably not.
That’s why you may be asking that question. This is a great checklist. Go through these things. If you can’t check off every one of these. It’s very unlikely that you’re HIPAA compliant, so make sure you do this. You can scan this QR code here and you’ll get this list to check for yourself in your office.
If you have any questions, don’t ever hesitate to reach out to us. Couple different things you can do here. If you want to schedule a demo and check out the HIPAA program and all the training that we have, just go to go dot fearless provider.com. Slash demo or you can simply scan the QR code over there.
The other thing too is if you just want to get started and make sure you become HIPAA compliant, you can go to ww dot fearless acupuncturist.com. And like I said, if you have any questions, more than happy to help you. Myself and Julia, more than happy to help. You can contact me at Dr. Perry at better HIPAA blueprint.
Dot com. Don’t hesitate to reach out. In the meantime, everybody, I want to say thank you again and thanks to the A A C for hosting this short webinar on the 18 different points of protected health information. And everybody, have an amazing day. Have an amazing rest of your week, and I will talk to you later.