Telemedicine and MacPractice

The Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act (H.R. 6074) was signed into law on March 6, 2020. This allows the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary to temporarily relax HIPAA requirements for telemedicine, which includes allowing the use of smartphones. On March 17 the HHS Secretary expanded Medicare coverage for telehealth visits and the HHS announced it will waive potential HIPAA penalties for good faith use of telehealth during this emergency. View the Telemedicine Fact Sheet from CMS here.

HIPAA Journal provides guidelines on Telemedicine in this article. There are several platforms that promote HIPAA compliant video conferencing. If a HIPAA-covered entity and a business associate enter into a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) prior to using the service for communicating PHI, the entity is covered.

While MacPractice does not provide an integrated telemedicine option at this time, MacPractice has partnerships with Jive by LogMeIn, which also offers GoToMeeting, as well as with Updox, both of which offer HIPAA compliant video conferencing.

We are pleased to be able to offer our clients using Patient Portal Online Registration access to a pre-built Patient Consent Form for providing TeleHealth Services. You can download the template called Telemedicine Consent from the EHR Shared Forms Library.

For some tips and information regarding billing telemedicine during COVID-19, click here to download a PDF copy.