HIPAA Isn’t Optional: What Indiana Home Care Must Get Right in 2025

HIPAA Isn’t Optional: What Indiana Home Care Must Get Right in 2025

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Carolina: Welcome to  CareSmartz360 On Air, a Home Care Podcast. My name is Carolina Gonzaga, Sales Executive at Caresmartz. Today, I am joined by the accomplished Wendi Tingley, Home Health and Hospice Care Resource Director at the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice Care.

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Carolina: and an experienced leader who’s been deeply rooted in the industry for over 2 decades. Her impressive journey spans leadership in disease, management, elder care and clinical nursing anchored by a master’s in nursing, leadership and management from Western Governors University.

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Carolina: Whether Wendi’s shaping statewide policies or educating providers, guiding compliance, strategies, Wendi, is all about helping home care and hospice professionals deliver great care. That’s both compassionate and compliant

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Carolina: in today’s episode. HIPAA isn’t optional. What Indiana home care must get right in 2025. Once she brings clarity to one of the most critical topics in our industry today, which is protecting patient privacy while also empowering home care teams in an increasingly digital world. So we’ll unpack risks, training approaches and the 3 key actions every Indiana provider must take

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Carolina: to stay HIPAA compliant in the year ahead. So if you’re leading a home care agency or working on the front lines, this one is for you welcome to the podcast. I’m so excited about this conversation, Wendi.

Session Starts here:

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Carolina: But before we jump into, you know HIPAA compliance the right way to handle data and also to empower us in the digital world. I’d love to know more about your history for 2 decades. I believe it is in our space. I’d love to learn a little bit about your history. What led to where you are today and more about your role today in general.

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Wendi Tingley: Sure. Yeah, great, thank you. So I’ve been a nurse for about a little over 20 years now, and it’s a second career for me and my 1st job. I worked in the hospital briefly hated it. That just was not the Forum for me. I got into the Hospice world and became a home hospice, nurse best Job ever loved. It loved the relationships. Love the just.

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Wendi Tingley: It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful job.

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Wendi Tingley: But I started moving into some more management roles and kind of work my way through management roles, and when I left the agency I’d been with for 15 years, I left as the director of clinical services

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Wendi Tingley: of A, of the Home Health side. So we had home health and we had hospice. Our home health side had about a census of about 500, so we were a pretty good size agency.

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Wendi Tingley: It was right towards the end of Covid, though, and I was kind of done, and so

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Wendi Tingley: The position with the Indiana Association for Home and Hospice care opened up and it fit what I was looking for. I’ve always wanted to teach.

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Wendi Tingley: and so I get that opportunity with

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Wendi Tingley: Iac is is what we refer to it, in short, and so I get to

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Wendi Tingley: help new agencies start their home health agencies, their personal service agencies, their Hospice agencies.

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Wendi Tingley: I get to stand with them when they’re having issues during surveys. Maybe the surveys aren’t going well, and so I get to kind of stand by them and support them through that. I get to provide lots of different educational opportunities for agencies in person, and then via zoom classes, or even just be via one on one with different agencies. So this is something I love. I love being able to help the agencies with compliance

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Wendi Tingley: with regulatory requirements. I’m their biggest cheerleader, and that’s what I always tell them when I meet them first.st I’m like, I’m going to be your biggest cheerleader, you know. Let’s do this. We we can do this so.

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Carolina: It sounds really, you know, in every province, in in Canada and every State everything is always different. And what I’m hearing is that in Indiana. There’s a leaning towards empowering, so instead of knocking them down, saying, maybe your service not going well, like maybe maybe you just give it up. They’re saying, hook up with with Iac! There is a resource there. So already you stepping is is so positive. So I’m sure that you’re received with open arms when they’re saying that Wendi can actually help you figure this out.

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Wendi Tingley: Yes, and that’s what I love. And I love the relationships that I’ve been able to build with agencies, and I love it when when they show up for a class, and they’re like, Yes, Wendi’s teaching. And and you know, I just I,

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Wendi Tingley: it’s just this is a. This is a good fit for me.

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Carolina: Yeah, it seems like you found your spot before we move on. I did want to go back. And only and this is actually a personal question, because I have a friend who’s worked in retirement, living for years. I left operations and retirement living at Covid, too, so I feel like I heard you when you go. Okay. At that point I done my duties. I was done. I was ready for something else, and she’s actually I was having drinks with her, and she just said, You know, I think I’m going to like, keep my job in retirement living. But I’m going to start focusing on death. And I said what

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Carolina: she said, I think I want to focus on Hospice, and she’s like, I’m really craving Pre Covid. The nature of my job working with residents that was more focused on the relationship rather than Covid occupancy, recovery. She says, I’m really looking. And I’m like you really want to focus on death, and she goes, I’m so attracted to it. I want to be that person. How? What would you say was the most fulfilling parts of working in hospice care.

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Carolina: and why you liked it better than at the hospital.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah.

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Wendi Tingley: When you go into a home where somebody has been ordered to receive Hospice, they’re real

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Wendi Tingley: There’s no

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Wendi Tingley: there’s no beating around the bush about, or any pretenses like. They’ve been told they have 6 months or less to live. And so they’re not. They’re not putting on airs or anything. You know they’re they’re real. And so you don’t have to go through. You know, all of this preamble to a relationship like you just dived right like, you know, that 1st visit you were talking about their death and what they want from their death. That’s intimate. And so.

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Wendi Tingley: you know, you build intimate relationships quickly, and not just with the patient, but with the families like I have families. I’ll be in the grocery store, and I haven’t been a home hospice nurse for 15 years, and I will. Still, I still run into families who will run up and give me a hug. And so I mean, I still have relationships from from that. And it’s just such.

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Wendi Tingley: It’s such an incredible feeling when you can be supportive

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Wendi Tingley: for people in that time of need. So.

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Carolina: Yeah, when I think about you know, you walk to the hospital. You’re like this isn’t for me. And then I think about your experience in the Hospice. What I picture is a quieter setting.

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Carolina: a little more grounded, and I have a feeling this friend of mine will do great, because just what you’re saying about the realness. No pretense. That’s exactly who she is. And now I’m kind of interested in working in hot scare. To be honest, you know what I mean, like just that, that real moment. So well, that that’s really powerful. I’m actually going to share this video with her before the podcast comes out because, I think it’ll inspire to stay on the right track. Thank you for sharing that with me.

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Wendi Tingley: Sure.

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Carolina: So today, we’re gonna focus a little bit more on kind of compliance in terms of privacy. Really, timely, because, as I mentioned 12 years ago.

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Carolina: you know, right? When Instagram kind of was starting to come out social media, there was a lot of like you don’t post people’s pictures. My gosh! Things have changed. And now we’re using tools like care smarts, and other other companies to to digitize in order to enhance the serving and enhance Ops. But there’s risk before we dive into that. Can you give me just maybe

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Carolina: a few examples of the types of topics that you’re helping agencies with when it comes to compliance. So yes, there’s privacy. What are some of the other kind of major areas of compliance that you find agencies might struggle with when they’re coming to you for help.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah. So some of the biggest issues of compliance are just

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Wendi Tingley: knowing the regulatory requirements, not just the federal requirements that we have to follow, but also the Indiana requirements, and sometimes they, sometimes they. They kind of conflict a little bit, so, knowing which ones are the most strict, and which ones they really need to follow. And so just helping them to understand. And there’s a lot of them, you know, there’s a lot of them, and they’re busy, and they don’t. They don’t have time to have their heads in in regulatory requirements all day long. And so

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Wendi Tingley: I do that for them. And so, you know, if if I can look at something that they’re doing and say, you know you’re you’re going to be cited for that. Not necessarily that they’re providing inappropriate care, or that they’re putting anybody at jeopardy. But just that

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Wendi Tingley: the Department of Health is going to come in here, and they are not going to like what they see in this documentation here. Here’s how you need to make that look. So that’s.

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Carolina: Yeah.

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Wendi Tingley: Probably the biggest thing is is helping them.

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Wendi Tingley: With those regulatory requirements.

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Carolina: And I guess also kind of like what to focus on, because maybe they’re getting really hung up on one area. And you’re like, from my experience. This isn’t Major. And then what? How valuable! Because when you’re running an agency and starting one for sure, I mean, you’re just overwhelmed with you might even be providing care.

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Wendi Tingley: Sure. Sure. Yeah. And and the regulatory requirement well, the the surveys from the Department of Health are kind of cyclic, because, you know, like one year they’ll be focusing on this. They may be focusing on the emergency preparedness plan. And so I have insight on that.

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Wendi Tingley: because I work with all of these agencies. So I can start saying to other agencies, Hey, I know you’re preparing for survey. Let’s look at your emergency preparedness plan. Let’s make sure that that you are up to where you need to be on that. I know that they’re asking about this, this and this, and so we can kind of help support them in that avenue, as well.

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Carolina: Okay, awesome. So based on your experience, what would you say? Are the biggest kind of privacy and compliance risks that home care providers often overlook before you’re able to redirect them.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah, I I think I honestly think the biggest one that we’re over overlooking right now, or it is social media. Unfortunately.

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Carolina: And it’s a.

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Wendi Tingley: Media is, it is. It can be a beautiful thing. And it’s interesting, because in today’s world most of our agencies are advertising their services via social media, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

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Wendi Tingley: or X, whatever we call it now. But they’re doing a lot of the, you know, a lot of their marketing even there, because that’s where that’s where you know my generation, who’s looking for caregivers for their parents. That’s where we’re at right now. We’re on the Facebook. And so so we’re seeing a lot of marketing there. But the problem is is that

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Wendi Tingley: we’ve got to be very careful with our caregivers, our caregivers. You know, they become very. They build these very close personal relationships with their clients, with their patients and those bonds that they create. They’re essential to the care that they’re providing. But

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Wendi Tingley: sometimes that blurs boundaries. And so what happens then is they become friends on Facebook, or they add them to Instagram, and then they start taking pictures with the clients, or they start posting them, or they even just they even say something about what they’ve done that day in that home, not necessarily saying the patient’s name or the client’s name, but just sharing something about them that

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Wendi Tingley: that could be deemed HIPAA. And so that’s 1 of the biggest issues that we see today is just trying to kind of mitigate that and and try to kind of nip that early on and just really emphasize the importance of education to their staff on

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Wendi Tingley: on social media. And and what that should not look like, you know. Sure, if you

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Wendi Tingley: become friends with them on Facebook after they’re no longer your patient or your client. That’s great. But you know

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Wendi Tingley: oh, I encourage patient or agencies to have a social media policy. Even where they’re very. They have very defined

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Wendi Tingley: ideas of what what should and shouldn’t happen. And and a lot of times like these caregivers that we’re dealing with.

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Wendi Tingley: You know the the non-medical caregivers. They’re they’re not professionally licensed. And so they haven’t gone through any background training

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Wendi Tingley: regarding HIPAA. And so they may not understand the importance of it. And so, you know, the agencies have to make sure that they’re they’re providing the education to these caregivers, so that, so that the agency doesn’t end up getting in trouble because of a.

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Carolina: Yeah.

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Wendi Tingley: So.

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Carolina: Yeah, there’s so many liable ways to be liable here. And I just think about the difference with home care is that you are in their home, and if you’re caring for the, it’s easy to feel comfortable. I mean, I used to always say, even in a community, that I worked in.

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Wendi Tingley: Yes.

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Carolina: You begin to feel like that’s your home, and you have to remind everybody in yourself that I actually just work here.

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Carolina: Yes.

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Carolina: their home, and even if they’re even if the client is so warm, make yourself at home. You always have to keep that hat on which can be hard because they’re also unlicensed medical providers. So I was going to ask you, what are the ways to help? You know? Non, licensed medical professionals understand? But it sounds like the creation of a social media policy would be to start. And

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Carolina: does. You know, Iac, provide any kind of templates for creating such a policy or guidelines.

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Wendi Tingley: So I. We do not provide a specific social media policy, but when they reach out to me about that, I provide guidance on things that they might want to add into it, and then I also send

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Wendi Tingley: kind of provide guidance as to places where they might look for templates for those social media policies. Also, there are lots of there are a lot of great places who create policies and procedures for non medical and medical, and you know there’s no reason for me to recreate the will when they’re already out there. And so I and I’ve looked at some of these. I feel very comfortable with some of these, so I might say, Hey, take a look at such and such, you might find what you’re looking for there. So. But the.

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Carolina: That’s great!

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Wendi Tingley: Oh, go ahead. I’m sorry. Yeah.

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Carolina: No, I just said, that’s great, because also one of the rules that you also must play is again going back to where should you focus? Where should you not focus? And if an agency is feeling overwhelmed by the idea that like oh, I need to have a policy for this, then it might be a good investment, right to even invest in a 3rd party. If it means you’re covering your butt.

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Wendi Tingley: Exactly exactly, and I know especially some of the newer agencies are like, I really don’t want to spend the money, and sometimes I’m you know my thoughts are well, you can’t afford not to spend the money on some of these things that are so important. So yeah.

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Carolina: Yeah. So I I ran into something because I’ve been in healthcare for so long. To me. Everyone it has to be HIPAA compliant, especially if you are, you know, a vendor that’s working for to to partner with, to be hired, basically as the software for these companies. And I learned the other day that there was a agency in some state that had a software that they loved.

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Carolina: And then they realized that it wasn’t HIPAA compliant, and the state that they’re in. It wasn’t your state all of a sudden was gonna require that. And I thought, wait. This big brand that I compete with is not HIPAA compliant. So let me ask you, when a Indiana agency is choosing software, do they have to be HIPAA compliant today? Or is that not a required thing yet.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah, no, they have to be. They have to be. And it’s it’s kind of interesting. Because, you know, during Covid, when we started doing some

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Wendi Tingley: I would call them televisits because we weren’t going into the homes as much. And so you know, every

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Wendi Tingley: everything went right during Covid, like anything was anything was open for interpretation. And so, you know, we were using like facetime initially for these video. You know, video visits and

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Wendi Tingley: facetime is not HIPAA compliance. And so so then, as we progressed through Covid, and we learned more and more about some of these compliance issues, and such, then then we had to start raining that back in and saying, Okay, look, guys, you cannot use. You cannot use your facetime. Even if it is your company phone. You cannot use facetime. These are our options. This is what you have to use. And so yeah, I mean, HIPAA. Compliance is

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Wendi Tingley: is huge and you know it. It kind of surprises me that there are even vendors out there who? Who wouldn’t be HIPAA compliant? Because

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Wendi Tingley: well, yeah, that’s just surprising.

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Carolina: I know it’s surprising.

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Carolina: It was hard for me to keep

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Carolina: my professional face on, because I was like, what are you telling me? And you’ve been using it for how long? And you know what was crazy, too. Is that you know I won’t mention the name of the platform, but they said, I’m happy with the platform. That’s.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah, sure.

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Carolina: So they’ve really invested in a lot. And yet there’s 1 big missing piece which often.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah.

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Carolina: 1st question I’m asked when I do a demo. So.

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Wendi Tingley: Sure.

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Carolina: Look out there, folks, there are. There are platforms out there that are not HIPAA compliant.

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Wendi Tingley: Yes.

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Carolina: And

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Carolina: I heard I, you know, with within the industry here in Toronto I go to a lot of events, and this lovely owner of an agency, said that. Oh, she was talking, speaking to a group and saying, Oh, I love to send out whatsapp messages to the caregivers and the families about what happened. I’m like.

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Carolina: do you send pictures? Do you send? Oh, my God! I just thought, oh, and I said, You know this isn’t a selling feature, but you should probably call me so. Lots going on out there, and hopefully, if they are cross paths with you, you’re able able to educate them before a mistake is made.

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Wendi Tingley: Sure.

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Wendi Tingley: Yes.

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Carolina: Because I guess you could get away with it. But then, if something happens and you get audited or something goes wrong, then that’s where you gotta.

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Wendi Tingley: That’s it.

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Carolina: Be safer.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah, that’s that’s just it. And people will say, Well, can I use it? Still, I’m like you, you know, you’re. And my my response is usually like, Well, you’re an adult like I’m not gonna tell you that you cannot. But what I’m telling you is that this you’re you’re introducing a huge risk into your agency, and you know my advice would be not to, because of this huge risk. So.

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Carolina: Yeah, a lot of our like care smarts, and some of our competitors, too, will have like texting feature, which is nice for that reason, because they find that the caregivers who are not accustomed to working in front of a laptop

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Carolina: then it’s all streamlined. But I guess, and this is my ignorance, I guess, but the types of things that you definitely want to keep off of these non HIPAA compliant apps would be personal information to do with the clients. Correct, like.

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Wendi Tingley: You would think. Yes.

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Carolina: Yeah, yeah.

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Wendi Tingley: But but I would receive I mean I I was the clinical manager, and I would have nurses text me pictures or home health aides or direct service workers. Text me pictures of wounds.

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Carolina: And you know I would say Nope.

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Wendi Tingley: Oh, what? No, you cannot do that! This is you cannot. You cannot do that. This is my phone and your phone are not HIPAA compliant. Have we even signed any documentation? Let’s get on a HIPAA compliant platform. Let’s make sure we’ve got you know that we’ve had the patients or clients sign

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Wendi Tingley: a release, stating that we.

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Carolina: Yes.

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Wendi Tingley: Take pictures. So yeah.

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Carolina: Yeah, okay.

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Wendi Tingley: I had doctors who would text orders. They would text orders

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Wendi Tingley: and tell, you know who. And again, this is kind of earlier on and so I know that I know the agencies have come a long way. But I I think that I think that those things still happen out there so.

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Carolina: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the clinical side, because that isn’t something that I’m so familiar with, and so does the concerns. I. I would assume that when you’re thinking about clinical or skilled, the concerns for HIPAA and privacy and compliance would be similar. But are there any ways where it’s different? Does the risk just go up then, with clinical? Or what are your thoughts on that.

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Wendi Tingley: Yeah, I think that the risk does go up because it is clinical, because there is medical information, but also

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Wendi Tingley: our clinical staff. So a lot of times our our non-medical staff, when they’re they’re taking care of a client. They’re in the home for hours on, you know. They’re they’re there for several hours at a time, and so, and their documentation is limited. What they have to actually document. But our clinical staff, you know they have to. They have to do a lot of documentation and a lot of times that doesn’t all get accomplished in the home. And so they may be stopping at the local coffee shop or the local Starbucks

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Wendi Tingley: midday to catch up on that documentation. And so you know, that introduces some issues in itself, because one you need to make sure you’re up against a wall, because anybody could walk behind you and stare at your screen and see what you’re documenting.

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Wendi Tingley: Also you have to be careful with your phone calls. If you’re calling a physician’s office and you’re sitting in Starbucks, even though you may not say the patient’s name.

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Wendi Tingley: I had. I actually received a complaint from a family member about one of our hospice nurses. At 1 point she’d called the physician’s office from Starbucks, had given a lot of information about that patient. It was a good friend of hers that was sitting at Starbucks. She knew exactly who this nurse was talking about, and so that was a HIPAA violation. And even though this nurse.

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Wendi Tingley: excellent nurse.

00:22:24.510 –> 00:22:24.960
Carolina: Yeah.

00:22:24.960 –> 00:22:35.829
Wendi Tingley: Realize that she violated anything she thought. You know I didn’t say the name. I didn’t say the date of birth. I didn’t say the medical record number. But she gave identifying information. So you know, those

00:22:36.250 –> 00:22:40.369
Wendi Tingley: areas that we have to be really careful about that we may not think about. So.

00:22:41.340 –> 00:22:48.083
Carolina: You know what it makes me think as follows, our industry is full of well meaning people. We’re not assuming the worst.

00:22:48.390 –> 00:22:48.730
Wendi Tingley: Like, if.

00:22:48.730 –> 00:23:02.939
Carolina: You know, we assume the best, but it really is you never! You really never know who that is. And there are so many areas outside of healthcare where you know that happens. And so because this information is so sensitive, we got to be more careful. So it’s almost like

00:23:03.310 –> 00:23:11.679
Carolina: when in doubt be safer. So sit against the wall. And also, I mean, I’m also thinking about Starbucks, and how unsecure that network is. But.

00:23:12.110 –> 00:23:13.400
Wendi Tingley: That’s that’s true.

00:23:13.400 –> 00:23:14.440
Carolina: Mossa.

00:23:14.440 –> 00:23:26.119
Wendi Tingley: I mean, most people should have a VPN. Like if they’re on a documentation system, they should be using a VPN, so that VPN. Should make that more secure for them. But yeah.

00:23:26.120 –> 00:23:26.490
Carolina: Yeah.

00:23:26.490 –> 00:23:29.879
Wendi Tingley: Is, is not the most secure network to be on so.

00:23:30.170 –> 00:23:46.819
Carolina: Yeah, I guess one of my last questions is, gonna be so with, you know, documentation, there’s a lot of agencies that are really avoiding, you know, an investment into some streamlined way. So a lot of the times the people I talk to

00:23:47.539 –> 00:24:17.220
Carolina: you know, my biggest competition is sometimes still paper. So you’ve got all sorts of stuff on your desktop and maybe stuff on your phone. What is the reliability of that like of the risk of that is having things kind of around your office, maybe even and now we work in things like shared spaces. So even just with like your day to day documentation. All of the forms and the documents that you have your staff fill out, and we’ve been talking about patients. What about the privacy of your actual caregivers.

00:24:17.500 –> 00:24:18.469
Wendi Tingley: Yeah, that’s true.

00:24:18.470 –> 00:24:35.899
Carolina: So what is what are some best practices for agencies that are really thinking about? Okay. So I’ve got you know, you know how I’m going to conduct myself. Social media. What about just like the day to day documentation and best practices? Try to keep things from spilling over and not being as secure.

00:24:36.070 –> 00:24:52.800
Wendi Tingley: Right? Yeah, that’s a great question, because it that does come into play. And there are still, even though a lot of agencies have moved to digital platforms. There still is a lot of paper out there, and especially when it comes to things such as personnel files.

00:24:53.205 –> 00:24:57.170
Wendi Tingley: And so you know, one of the things that we did that was

00:24:58.310 –> 00:25:08.339
Wendi Tingley: incredible was moving all of our personnel files into a HIPAA compliant digital platform. And so you know what would happen in our agency is. We have our personnel files

00:25:08.350 –> 00:25:36.850
Wendi Tingley: in a locked cabinet in one of our offices, but during the day people were in and out. Those didn’t always get locked back. It was a very busy place, and so anybody essentially could come in and just take a quick peep at some of that stuff. So by putting it into a HIPAA compliant digital platform, that to me was the smartest thing that we could do one because we could access it, any of us who needed it.

00:25:37.252 –> 00:25:51.290
Wendi Tingley: could access it, and we could limit the the access to the right people, which was, you know that that’s very important. The other thing we have, you know, a lot of times. People are still people still like paper. And even if we’re

00:25:51.290 –> 00:26:15.796
Wendi Tingley: They want to print stuff off, and they want to have that paper in hand when they’re driving, or when they get to the client’s house or the patient’s house. And so then what happens with that? What happens if you know you leave that paperwork sitting in the front seat of your car, and you don’t flip it over. Or what if somebody breaks into your car? You didn’t lock it. And so, you know, agencies have to address that as well. We part of our policy, for HIPAA was we had

00:26:16.120 –> 00:26:28.929
Wendi Tingley: We had bags that had locks on them, and a key, and so, if you had any paper that was HIPAA compliant you. It had to be in that bag, and it had to be locked.

00:26:29.080 –> 00:26:30.050
Wendi Tingley: And yeah.

00:26:30.280 –> 00:26:41.989
Wendi Tingley: that could probably be snipped and broken off. At least we were taking steps for those people who still wanted those paper documents and wanted to have them on hand. So you know.

00:26:41.990 –> 00:26:42.400
Carolina: Yeah.

00:26:42.430 –> 00:27:03.700
Wendi Tingley: We have to consider all of it. And we really have to look at each agency and what they’re doing and what works for, what’s kind of working for them, and try to kind of guide them and lead them into the best possible platforms, or kind of meet them where they’re at and figure out what they need to do with their current process. So.

00:27:03.850 –> 00:27:09.589
Carolina: For sure, and I I met a lovely woman that’s been running an agency for years out of one of the States.

00:27:10.400 –> 00:27:17.039
Carolina: and I was so shocked to say she had 30 plus clients. She’s been in business for like 15 years.

00:27:17.070 –> 00:27:46.459
Carolina: Everything was on paper, and I just thought, Wow, but we, you know you do have to meet them where they are and start small. And I have to say that until about a few months ago, when I would do, Demos, I would always just need to have my piece of paper. And then you. What I realized is that I never really read my own handwriting, because it didn’t make any sense anyways. So I finally have some a place that I do it digitally. But it’s hard to change. But sometimes if you but you can change, and it might you actually might end up liking it, because now I’m not wasting

00:27:46.530 –> 00:27:53.000
Carolina: paper everywhere. How many notebooks do I have. So I’m just a Testament to you can, in fact, change

00:27:53.040 –> 00:27:55.200
Carolina: if you put your mind, it.

00:27:55.450 –> 00:27:56.040
Wendi Tingley: Yeah.

00:27:56.250 –> 00:28:22.410
Carolina: But I guess I guess we’ll end it is, and and you know it doesn’t have to be 3. But let’s say you have a home care provider, and this is a call and show. And they said, what should I prioritize in 2025? So I can stay compliant? What are 3 topics or or things that I should keep in mind if you don’t have 3. That’s cool, but just a little kind of snippet summary of what what an agency should be focusing on if they could.

00:28:22.770 –> 00:28:37.939
Wendi Tingley: Yeah. So I, I think one. What we were just talking about is just the secure use of the technology. And so making sure that they are HIPAA compliant, that if they’re on laptops, that they have a secure VPN, or you know that that devices have

00:28:38.466 –> 00:28:56.569
Wendi Tingley: password, there are password protected, or that you’re doing dual authentication. You know, we we don’t like that stuff. It’s a pain to us, and we just want to get in and do our work. But those we can’t. We can’t not do that anymore. We have to. We have to make sure we’re using the most secure form of technology

00:28:56.570 –> 00:29:10.230
Wendi Tingley: that is available to us. And then, you know, the next thing, I think, would be just making sure that when we’re educating staff on HIPAA compliance, that we’re doing it very specific to their roles. So if we are, if we are training

00:29:10.710 –> 00:29:29.600
Wendi Tingley: non-medical, direct caregivers that we are tailoring their training to them, that we’re not using the canned training that maybe we use for our nurses or our physical therapists that we’ve actually created a different training. That is maybe less technical uses, more more examples.

00:29:29.870 –> 00:29:53.170
Wendi Tingley: I learn better from examples, you know. So you know, tailor tailor, that training to those those different roles. And then I think that the 3rd thing and this is what a lot of agencies don’t know and aren’t aware of. But there are specific protocols that need to be followed when there is a breach, and even if it’s not a breach that

00:29:53.640 –> 00:30:23.609
Wendi Tingley: is caught by somebody big like Cms or Medicaid, or something, even if they catch it themselves. You know there are some self-reporting procedures that need to be followed, and I don’t think that agencies are aware of all of that. Those important procedures, so making sure that they are educated on that, and that they have their own policies and procedures to make sure that they are staying compliant with self-reporting when it comes to HIPAA.

00:30:23.620 –> 00:30:25.089
Wendi Tingley: So I think those are my 3 talks.

00:30:25.090 –> 00:30:25.750
Carolina: Yeah.

00:30:26.330 –> 00:30:43.719
Carolina: That’s great. Well, I hope that we have a lot of folks in Indiana listening to this, podcast. We’re definitely gonna push it out into the ether. But I want to thank you for your time. And where can an agency find you guys, is there a website or something that they could quickly, Google, what’s the best way for them to find you quickly.

00:30:43.720 –> 00:30:50.590
Wendi Tingley: Yeah. So our our website is, www, dot, IAHHC.org.

00:30:51.040 –> 00:31:04.058
Carolina: Okay, excellent. And this is a tool guys that you guys can use. This is here for you. So please do reach out. And if you’re lucky you’ll end up in one of Wendi’s classes. I learned a lot today and make sure you’re HIPAA compliant. Everybody.

00:31:04.330 –> 00:31:05.690
Wendi Tingley: That’s right.

Conclusion

Thank you, Wendi, for those incredible insights and practical takeaways. Your perspective is a vital reminder that delivering care at home doesn’t lessen the responsibility. If anything, it heightens the need for privacy and compliance at every single level, and to our dedicated listeners, thank you for joining us again today. Be sure to follow CareSmartz360 On Air for more conversations that happen to shape the future of home care until next time. This is Carolina Gonzaga, signing off.