HIPAA Compliant Telehealth

HIPAA Compliant Telehealth – Is Your Organization Ready for a Post-COVID World?

The day will come, hopefully soon, when this pandemic is behind us. When it is, will you be ready with a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform?

The use of telehealth for senior health care visits has soared this year, from a low of just a fraction of one percent (0.1%) of Medicare primary visits in February of 2020 to almost half of all visits (43.5%) in April, just two months later. Safety is one obvious reason for this surge. But what made it even possible is that the federal government drastically reduced HIPAA restrictions on telehealth visits. Suddenly, anyone with Zoom could, and did, use it for health care visits, without worries about the repercussions of HIPAA data breaches.

The good news is that this effort to ensure access to health services has had the desired effect of helping seniors, who are especially at risk of the more serious effects of COVID, to shelter in place without sacrificing their health care. And, in fact, both patients and health care providers have seen the long-term benefits of moving many services to telehealth.

The bad news is that this relaxation of HIPAA enforcement won’t last forever. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces HIPAA, issued the Notification of Enforcement Discretion for Telehealth Remote Communications During the COVID-19 Nationwide Public Health Emergency, which waives many HIPAA requirements for telehealth visits. Specifically, “Covered health care providers will not be subject to penalties for violations of the HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification Rules that occur in the good faith provision of telehealth during the COVID-19 nationwide public health emergency,” according to the US Department of  Health and Human Services (HSS).

The HIPAA waiver is set to last as long as the publicly declared National Health Emergency, which is currently set to expire in January, 2021. As long as the federal government continues to prioritize COVID as a national priority, and US Health Secretary Alexa Azar continues to extend the National Health Emergency, the HIPAA waiver will continue. It will not be forever, and it may even be for very much longer. And that’s why this question is so important. Are you ready?

The only way to continue using telehealth for visits in a post-COVID world is to start looking for a HIPAA-compliant solution, the sooner the better.

GrandCare is one such solution. It is a remote monitoring and communications platform for seniors. It’s a proven solution that has been on the market since 2005. GrandCare’s large, simple touch appliance and home health care program helps professional caregivers and families to have HIPAA-compliant video conferencing, send messages, and monitor a loved one’s health & safety. It’s been adopted by senior communities, home health care providers, healthcare payors, disability providers, and even individual families.

Find out more about GrandCare at www.grandcare.com or call us 262-338-6147

Mom sitting outside

Choosing the right community– My search for a technology solution and how GrandCare helped Mom during COVID

In 2012, I moved my parents out of their home and into an assisted-living community. This was a whole new world for all of us — lots of learning and experimenting. The community did offer pendants for residents to press when they needed something (anything) from a caregiver. My mom was never known for her patience. And my dad was struggling with the onset of dementia; so, the pendant was never satisfying for a wide variety of reasons, including the time it took for my mother to press the pendant and for someone to check on her. We brought in our own caregivers to supplement what we were receiving in the community and provide a more enriching life for my parents.

Three years later, after starting a Family Council at the community but becoming frustrated at the lack of responsiveness and level of care, we moved both of my parents to another community. My father moved upstairs to memory care, where he died shortly thereafter. Again, my mom was given a pendant and again she was frustrated by it for the same reasons. But, the community overall was better staffed, my mother had adjusted to the idea of being in assisted-care, as we had. But, as often happens, management changed at the community. It was owned by a private-equity firm who brought in a different company to manage it; and, not surprisingly, their first order of business was to reduce costs, which meant reducing care. We quickly moved again.

So, at the end of 2019, my mom — together with a good friend she met at the previous community — moved to a new one. I liked almost everything better about this facility except for one thing: no pendants. Instead, they had a pull cord in a few places in the room, though my wheelchair-bound mother couldn’t reach the cords and, as she was cognitively in decline, she would forget those options were there for her.

That’s when I went searching for a solution

I was recommended to personally contact the CEO of GrandCare, which right away made me more interested. At this point in my family caregiving role, I learned that personal recommendations are often particularly fruitful and — more so — if a CEO of a tech company is willing to speak with a customer, that speaks to how much they care and want to learn how even better serve those in need. We placed an order for the GrandCare system. When it arrived, a customer-service team member quickly and easily walked me through set up — both the hardware and the app on my phone. Finally, I could check in with my mother without her needing to carry a cellphone (and remembering to have it near her, listen for it, and answer it), which had become increasingly difficult. 

For all of these now seven-plus years that my mom had been in assisted living, I was able to visit her almost daily. But then, Covid hit and the world changed. How fortunate I was to be able not only to speak with my mother, but to see her and observe her care. I was the often “third person in the room,” as my mother was being cared for by individuals she didn’t recognize because they were now wearing masks. The closeness with my mother that I was about to virtually achieve with GrandCare, as well as many of the additional features the system offered, was exactly what we needed and continue to need. I don’t really know what I would have done without it, except to feel as if I’m no longer connected and far less informed. 

Anytime we had a question about the system or additional functionality, GrandCare would jump on a call. And during the course of the past many months, I’ve even suggested a few minor tweaks to the system, which their tech people not only appreciated but implemented. Thank you, GrandCare.

– Peter, son of a GrandCare user