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Hi everybody. Good morning or good afternoon, whatever it may be for you. This is Dr. Perry Barnhill with the Fearless Chiropractor, and also in the background that you won’t see. It’s Dr. Julie McLaughlin. Today I want to talk to you about a few things regarding reproductive healthcare, and also before I do that, I want to give a big thanks to ChiroSecure for bringing this to you.
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Now, reproductive healthcare, many of us as chiropractors, we are chiropractors, so we think, Hey, reproductive healthcare. What does that have to do with me as a chiropractor? Let me tell you this. Reproductive healthcare involves several different things, which guess what are very likely in your patient’s files?
Why? Because when you take your patient’s case histories, they fill out the forms and they’ll talk about these things. In fact, some of the questions that are asked on the very forms you give to ’em will apply to reproductive healthcare like contraception, pregnancy management, fertility, sterilization.
Also sexual health. So make sure you stay tuned for what’s coming up because these things have recently changed and it’s something you really need to be aware of, to stay on top of things and to stay compliant. Start side slow, please.
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Again, big thanks to ChiroSecure for sponsoring this. Alrighty. Kinda like I said in the intro, how fast things change in the world of HIPAA. Quite frankly, it even blows us away that at one point at the beginning of the year, we have a new law that comes out regarding reproductive healthcare. And then several months later now, so now in June, we’ve had a judge actually change what’s required to do in regard to the reproductive healthcare law as it pertains to HIPAA.
So we are going to talk about that right now and what you need to know. Strengthening reproduction healthcare privacy under the new HIPAA privacy rule. So if you remember before we talked about some new requirements at the beginning of the year, some things called attestation forms and action steps that we were required to do then that in most states, I’ll get detailed on this.
In most states, you do not have to do any longer. So here’s what happened on June 18th, very specifically. So this is literally just a few, couple weeks ago, a US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. A federal judge invalidated the 2024 HIPAA reproductive health modifications to the privacy rule.
And so this is what happens. These decisions become immediate and it applies. Nationwide, at least somewhat, because some states I want to talk to you about are a little more the, their rules will be slightly different, so I want you to pay attention to that. And this is what the Texas judge said. He ruled that HHS overstepped its bounds and cited three main legal issues.
This is what he said, the rule unlawfully restricted state public health laws. Two, it redefined terms like person and public health in ways that exceeded federal authority. Three, it addressed politically charged issues like abortion without clear congressional approval and or a violation of major questions doctrine.
All right, and that kind of gets into the weeds, but basically what’s saying what it’s saying here is that I. A judge decided what was in the past regarding reproductive healthcare. And remember, reproductive healthcare is a big variety of different things. It can include contraception, things like I just mentioned.
Abortion, pregnancy management, which that is fertility, sterilization, and also as they define it, sexual health. So there’s a big umbrella under the reproductive healthcare law, or at least what it used to be. HIPAA regulated entities, things like you and I as chiropractors, covered entities and business associates, so people you do business with.
You remember your business associates that have access to protected health information in your office. They have to follow state laws regarding reproductive health. Now, in the absence of HIPAA, reproductive health rule, notably many states, and this is where I talked about, it’s important to pay attention to this just because.
The judge in Texas said the federal government basically overstepped it bounds. There’s still gonna be some states that are going to very likely require this. In fact, we may even recommend that you continue to do what we’ve talked about in the past regarding attestations for the reproductive healthcare laws.
So some of the states are increasing health privacy protections for the residents states such as New York, California. Washington, Nevada, and Connecticut. Now, I think there probably may be a few others that will go ahead and stick to the current law. Here’s what’s important to realize with HIPAA, and it does get a little confusing, but there’s federal law, as we all know about, Hey, there’s federal law and then there’s state law.
Now, when it comes to HIPAA, believe it or not, state law supersedes federal law, meaning this state laws can have more laws or more strict laws are slightly different, above and beyond. What the federal statutes say. So this is why we brought up some states here. This may change. This is a re another reason why it’s very important to have someone helping you out with all these type of things, because things change very quickly as you can see.
So here’s how this impacts you. Covered entities are no longer. Now remember those states that I talked about, you still may be required to do these things, but most covered entities in most state, or I should say all covered entities in most states are no longer required to seek attestations from requesters regarding protected health information related to reproductive healthcare.
Like I talked about the definitions there just a little bit ago. So what does that mean? If your notice of patient privacy policies had that in there because you made the appropriate changes you were supposed to. Take those policies out because they’ll no longer apply in your particular state.
All right. Now if they still apply in your state, then just go ahead and keep them in there. If you’ve never changed those things, then it’s something you should have done. But like I said, if you change them, you may need to take ’em back out. But certain states go ahead and keep the reproductive healthcare laws in there, and I think you should still abide to those things.
Navigating the prohibition on disclosing protected health information for the purposes of investigating or imposing liability and lawful reproductive healthcare imposed by your state. So here’s what we’re saying is that you may still have to, although most states, like I said, however, there may be some states, like we mentioned, that you may still have to do some of the things that we talked about early on in the year regarding attestation statements with reproductive health law.
Here, if you remember, what we went through before is a model attestation form. This was the form that you were supposed to send out. Say for example, someone requested protected health information and in your records, basically your PHI your patient’s records, you had something to do with reproductive healthcare law in there.
So therefore, in that case, if it was, somebody asking about it. We had to send this form out and make sure they weren’t gonna use that against that person in regards to basically a way that they would get them in trouble. I know that’s not the right words, but wouldn’t use it against them. All right?
So most states now we don’t have to do this. I. So it just brings it back to HIPAA’s. Not one of those things. We can just set it and then forget about it because it changed. Look what just happened in Texas. It’s a really good reminder. New laws popped last year and now one of these laws.
Has changed. A single court ruling can unveil or unravel rather new HIPAA guidance like overnight. I mean it, this popped out on June 18th and then the next day it’s completely different for just about everybody. It’s constantly evolving. HIPAA from reproductive privacy. Cybersecurity is a very much evolving thing evolving component of HIPAA.
Stay on top of that. We have all that information. This is why we say monthly training, monthly HIPAA training. It’s not optional. It’s your lifeline. Now, let me be very clear and clarify. We don’t say that it’s a law that you have to do monthly HIPAA training, but here’s what they say. You better be doing.
Ongoing HIPAA compliance training. In fact, I’ve even heard some professionals in the world of compliance and HIPAA suggest that you do it at least twice a month. That’s why we recommend at least monthly, this is something you need to do to stay on top of HIPAA just in case you get audited. Staying informed protects your license.
It protects your patients and your peace of mind. And I’ll add to that, if there’s an audit and you don’t have some of these things in place that you have, it is very scary and it can be very miserable on you and also on your practice. So just one of these things, make sure you begin the process of getting these things going.
In the right direction. Now, HIPAA compliance, again, it’s not about just checking a single box. It’s about staying ready for whatever comes next. So you have to keep learning, you have to keep updating things, as we like to say. You need to, you need to stay fearless. We say fearless ’cause we want you to practice without fear.
If you’re so focused on some of these things and you don’t have someone to stay abreast or stay on top of these things. You might be scared of it, and really there’s no reason to just don’t put your head in the sand, get trained, get the appropriate training. So here we go. What are the next steps to do some of those things?
We have a compliance checklist here, specifically for HIPAA. You can scan this q QR code, or you can just look at this list here. You should go through this list and be able to check these boxes because these are parts of HIPAA that you need to be doing in order to be HIPAA compliant.
A couple other things you can do. We, you can schedule a demo with us. If you’d like to learn more about our HIPAA program, you can schedule a demo with us. Certainly, it’s easy. You can just get started. You can scan the QR code here. If you wanna have a demo with myself or with Dr. Julie, you can go to right there.
Go dot fearless provider.com/demo. If you just wanna get started, go to w better HIPAA blueprint.com or some people wanna hop on the phone and talk to me. I’m totally cool with that, Dr. perry@betterHIPAAblueprint.com. So if you have any questions, like I said, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are absolutely more than happy to help you.
We are chiropractors and so we know what it’s like to have a busy office, and we also know what it’s like to have the need to learn these things. From somebody who knows how to teach them. In the meantime, have a really good day and I’ll talk to you soon.
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