Published April 21, 2020
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published a notice providing further clarification of what sorts of platforms are appropriate for patient care during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. The notice indicates that providers can use “popular applications that allow for video chats” with the following list of applications:
“including Apple FaceTime, Facebook Messenger video chat, Google Hangouts video, Zoom, or Skype…”
The notice makes specific references to the types of technologies that are not consider acceptable for patient care:
“Under this Notice, however, Facebook Live, Twitch, TikTok, and similar video communication applications are public facing, and should not be used in the provision of telehealth by covered health care providers.”
It is also mentioned that providers seeking additional privacy protections seek out a HIPAA compliant vendor willing to sign a business associate agreement (BAA) and provides a short list of vendors who have indicated they have such a solution. The notice does provide a disclaimer that the OCR cannot recommend or endorse any vendor or solution, and that their list may be incomplete.