HIPAA Issues with TYCB
I am in Healthcare as a business. Now that we have gone completely online with our forms (i.e. no paper forms at our BNI chapter meeting), I can no longer thank a person in my chapter for closed business without violating HIPAA regulations. Before, I could write my TYCB (without my name attached to it) on a slip of paper and our VP would enter the information manually without knowing its origins. Now, the only way that I avoid violating HIPAA regulations is to thank "BNI" online and not the specific individual. This works for now, but it does not fully give the TYCB credit where it is due.
I have spoken to my director and VPs about this issue and no one can come up with a solution. BNI Corporate needs to include an "Anonymous" button on the forms to still transfer the credit to the member in my chapter without a documented trail online and/or BNI needs to make their servers HIPAA compliant.
Please let me know if there is another work around that you can think of. Otherwise, this issue will greatly impact the Health and Wellness fields in BNI going forward.
-
Official comment
@erik - Happy Friday to you!
The details on the current TYFCB slips online are 100% private and anonymous. ONLY YOU can see the details of the slip. The only thing anyone else can see is the person that was thanked and the amount - they don't even know it came from you, unless you tell them directly.
Hope this helps!
-
@Erik I do not see how it is a HIPAA violation to thank somebody for closed business. HIPAA requires that we protect identifying information of clients. Thanking somebody for business contains no client identifying information.
-1 -
Also, when you "Thank" a member for Closed Business, that member does not know where it came from, but that they have been thanked. It is completely anonymous.
-1 -
I disagree with the official comment. It is not totally confidential. BNI knows what you submitted and to whom, which is why it is able to tell you what the TYFCB is that you had submitted online / in the app. BNI also knows because of the online forms exactly who that person you thanked referred to you, so I see the potential issue there you are referring to and the official comment here should probably be corrected because it is not true as worded.
1 -
Daniel,
I stand by the statement. NOBODY on the front end of the system, including myself as a sysadmin user with godlike access, has access to the detailed information. ONLY the member can see the details of the TYFCB slip - period. The details of the referral slip are also hidden to everyone except the two referral partners, so that is protected as well.
The only things that are visible to end users except the referral partners are:
1) For a referral, the names of the two referral partners and the date
2) For the TYFCB, the name of who was thanked and the amount
There is no public mention of the client names or a link of the TYFCB to the specific referral.Just to clarify - the information is stored in the database and someone who has direct table level access could find this information, but that would be true of any database. There is no public or front end availability of the information.
0 -
Whenever I put in a referral, I make it very anonymous. Even if I am referring somebody to an electrician or a car repair person, I do not put in any identifying information on BNIConnect. BNI knowing that you thanked somebody for closed business does not give away any identifying details. It is therefore not a HIPAA violation. You could ask the referring party to put the referral in as ABC with phone number of 1234567. You can put in the TYFCB similarly anonymized. There is no way in which that is a HIPAA violation.
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
6 comments