Please Note
The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI) by medical service providers, among others.
Like many user-operated online services, our platform gives you the tools for uploading, gathering and publishing information, and such tools can be used in both compliant and non-compliant ways.
Healthcare providers should adopt practices that do not compromise their obligations with respect to PHI under HIPAA.
The expected use of our platform does not violate HIPAA as it does not involve disclosure or use of “protected health information”,
defined as personally-identifiable information about a patient’s medical conditions or care. Review requests should therefore not disclose any information about the patient’s health or care.
Patients who willingly write reviews for public consumption, either on our platform or via third-party review publishers such as Google and Yelp, have agreed to make that information public with an attribution that they themselves define.
Further, our platform does not store any patient communications except reviews written for public consumption.
To reduce the likelihood that patients compromise their own privacy, non-review communications such as contact form submissions are not stored on our platform.
They can be collected via an encrypted form and routed through email to an address or addresses you define.
You can therefore achieve end-to-end encryption of all patient messages by also using secured email for collection.
Of course, since users have the ability to use our tools to flout these rules, users are ultimately responsible for the patient privacy mandate.
Disclaimer
The materials on this website are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. These materials are intended, but not promised or guaranteed to be current, complete, or up-to-date and should in no way be taken as an indication of future results.
Transmission of the information is not intended to create, and the receipt does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship between sender and receiver. The newsletters and articles on this website are offered only for general informational and educational purposes.
They are not offered as and do not constitute legal advice or legal opinions. You should not act or rely on any information contained in this website without first seeking the advice of an attorney.