Just after I published my last post, I got a Google alert on another blog post “HIPAA & Hijacked SKYPE Passwords: Another Security Violation that Brings Viability of Online Counseling via SKYPE into Yet More Questioning” at Telehealth.net in which the author talks about Skype password hijacking. Password hijacking means that someone else basically breaks [...]
Tagged informed consent, password, security, skypeI was talking with a friend a few days ago about telepsychiatry, and she asked a good question. “Is Skype HIPAA-compliant?” For those fortunate individuals who don’t know what HIPAA is, HIPAA is a law passed in 1996 governing, among several other things, privacy of medical records. This law is responsible for the unintelligible two to [...]
Tagged AES, encryption, HIPAA, password, PHI, skypeTelepsychiatry has several advantages over face to face psychiatry, but undoubtedly the most compelling is the virtual elimination of AFAT. “AFAT” is an acronym I coined myself and it stands for “Atom Fool Around Time.” The idea behind this acronym comes from a book by Nicholas Negroponte written in 1995, called “Being Digital.” Negroponte’s book [...]
Tagged advantages, AFAT, atoms, bitsIn my previous post Telepsychiatry: What’s lost?, Part one, I focused on what sensory information that was available in a face-to-face interview that wasn’t available in a videocall, and mentioned that I didn’t think that sensory information was the whole story. I think that there is a psychological reaction to telepsychiatry that relates to how [...]
Tagged countertransference, disadvantages, face-to-face, technophobia, teletransference, transferenceIt seems to me that the information conveyed on a video and audio link between a patient and me has to be more than the information conveyed on a telephone call. All the information comings through on a telephone call is present on a videocall like Skype provides, and I can’t think of any way [...]
Tagged disadvantages, face-to-face, skype, standard of care, webcamIn Is telepsychiatry legal in Maryland? I mentioned that I was puzzled by the lack of information regarding what was and was not legal for me to do in the state of Maryland, so I dropped an email to Michele Phinney, the director of the Office of Regulation and Policy Coordination in the Department of [...]
Tagged Maryland Board of PhysiciansAs I mentioned in my post “How I got started in telepsychiatry,” I realized that I didn’t know much about telepsychiatry, so I asked the two questions most doctors ask these days when they find out something new in medicine: Does it work? Is it legal? I wasn’t as concerned about the first question right [...]
Tagged HIPPA, Maryland Board of Physicians, prescriptions, skype, standard of careI really didn’t plan to do telepsychiatry, it just happened. Sort of like committing a crime, I had the motive, the means, and the opportunity. I take care of a patient who can’t always get to her appointments, so I was already doing some work on the telephone with her. I really don’t like to [...]
Tagged skype, webcam
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