Best practice re: volunteer visit reports. Paper documentation from volunteer? Reports sent by e-mail? Would the latter be HIPPA compliant?
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Dear Gary,
The latter is HIPAA compliant if you are using encrypted email at both ends of the transmission. This means the volunteer must also be able to send and receive encrypted email. Some hospices get around this by anonymizing the email (i.e. using initials for patient names etc.). This method is fraught with the potential for HIPAA violations. To do this effectively and not violate confidentiality requires a good knowledge of HIPAA requirements. I have personally seen even very experienced clinical staff and volunteer coordinators unknowingly blatantly violate the HIPAA laws using this technique. An even bigger problem is that volunteers are highly likely to not anonymize an email correctly. While volunteers may be HIPAA trained, they are rarely skilled enough to know all of the nuances of this technique.
I highly recommend reviewing this Protected Health Information (PHI) link before attempting to utilize anonymizing emails. Another good link is this clarification of what PHI is and what constitutes a violation.
The Hospice Volunteer Association (HVA) provides a simple alternative to this complexity. Our Patient Data Vault service permits fully compliant HIPAA volunteer reporting.
Hope this was helpful.
Greg Schneider
Founder & President, HVA
HCF Creator