Teletherapy: What to Do the First Week of School

Starting back to school with students is a few weeks away but my nerves are flaring.  I have a new assignment at a new school with new kids and a new staff. As a teletherapist, I have experienced periodic, if not frequent, reassignments. I don't know my caseload yet but I'm itching to prepare. In the past, I have started off the year with get-to-know-you activities, reviewing speech room rules, and collecting baseline data. The first round of progress reports come quickly and I like to be prepared. I am still tinkering with ice breaker activities but I did decide to put a new twist on my typically boring speech room rules review. I made a video of myself on webcam, in Zoom, demonstrating less than stellar etiquette for the students to critique. My goal is to have the students observe my behaviors, discuss my behaviors, and generate a short list of speech room rules. I uploaded the video to You Tube, set the permissions to unlisted, then copied the link to SafeTube to get rid of the advertisements. I made a very basic slide show in Power Point with a link to my video, then saved it as a PDF. I use Adobe Acrobat Reader for my PDF's. This tool allows me to click on the video link, which will open in a new window, then annotate the slides if the students have more ideas or comments. I also plan on creating a Google Document for each group where I can write down student thinking and post the rules list. That way I have a running record of session activities, homework assignments, and a way to review rules as needed. Now I have an activity I'm hoping to be able to use with the majority of my students and their families. 

Teletherapy: Legally Protect Your Students and Yourself

Only a few more weeks (days) of summer vacation left! Time to get organized! One part of my telepractice that I need to get in order is making sure I am following HIPAA, FERPA, and HITECH rules and guidelines. Take the time to read and develop procedures for legally protecting your clients and yourself. 



What is HIPAA?

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996

Below is my current list of useful links specifically related to HIPAA.

HealthIT.gov

Official Website of The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)

Texting and HIPAA

https://luxsci.com/blog/to-text-or-not-to-text-sending-text-messages-under-hipaa.html

Google Drive/G Suite and HIPAA compliance

https://telehealth.org/blog/which-cloud-storage-services-are-hipaa-compliant/

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/cloud-computing/index.html

Document from US Dept of Commerce

The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

BAA’s

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities/sample-business-associate-agreement-provisions/index.html

What is FERPA?

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

What is HITECH?

Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health

https://wayback.archive-it.org/3926/20131018161347/http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/10/20091030a.html

Sharing HIPAA fines and victims of security breaches with public

https://compliancy-group.com/will-new-laws-allow-patients-to-cash-in-on-hipaa-fines/