Can patients waive their HIPAA rights when using specific teletherapy platforms? For instance, those who prefer to use FaceTime over a HIPAA-compliant platform.
1) My understanding (and I’m not a lawyer, so don’t rely on me) is that HIPAA confers rights on our patients/clients, and that those rights may be waived. So, my understanding of the answer to the original poster’s question is, “Yes, patients/clients may waive their rights.” But I want to emphasize: I don’t know this to be true; I just assume it to be so.
2) My understanding, further, is that very few of us actually conduct our practices in a way that is, fully, HIPAA-compliant. For example, we e-mail and text our patients. Or our electronic or paper record-keeping practices are not, strictly speaking, fully compliant with the requirements of HIPAA.
If you are interested in ensuring compliance with HIPAA, I suggest you speak with a lawyer about how to accomplish that. If you’re interested in protecting your patients’/clients’ confidentiality and privacy, that’s an entirely separate question.
