What is a BAA? [Show Notes]

Boost your understanding of BAA – the key to ensuring HIPAA compliance for healthcare organizations. Don’t miss out on this valuable resource!

Transcript

Note: This video is transcribed using AI therefore some errors have occurred in the transcription of this video.

Hello everyone, this is Alex from Stressless Therapist here and I want to give you a little snippet from one of the lessons that I do on opening a private practice, but more specifically it’s going to be looking at what is a BAA (Business Associate Agreement) and why is it important for your practice. Let’s get ready to dive right in. Before we do, I want to do kind of a little disclaimer. I am not a lawyer, so this is purely for educational purposes. This is not considered legal advice. If you have legal questions specific to your practice, I strongly recommend that you reach out to a lawyer that specializes in small businesses if not private practices in particular. But, I’m hoping that this information is going to at least educate you on what the very questions could be if you wanted to reach out to a lawyer, as well as kind of knowing what paperwork is needed to get your business off the ground. So, the Business Associate Agreement. Now, this is something when I first started Private Practice, I had no idea what this was or what it covered or what it even meant, quite frankly. This is an important piece of documentation to have in your practice. It’s not going into a client record, it’s something that you keep in your own files. More from the business perspective, what this piece of paper is, it’s an agreement between you and an outside agency, a different person that basically extends the HIPAA protection. So, perfect example would be if I am working with Google, right? I’m working with Google suite for my phone and my email, and I’m going to be talking to clients about clinical things, right? Things that need to be protected by HIPAA. In order for Google to be legally bound to protect that information, there needs to be an agreement. You can’t just have an email and assume it’s private, right? Because the way technology works, there’s always cookies, there’s always something that can kind of tag and link the conversation and have it refound. So, to have extra protection on those clinical conversations, right, Google needs to be one aware of it and two have the technology in place to protect it. So, that is what a Business Associate Agreement is about, it’s essentially saying, “Hey Google, this is sensitive information, I need you to keep it private, right?” And more importantly, if there is a breach of that privacy, you need to let me know this way because I let my clients know is essentially what they’re saying, right? Not every company offers this, and if they don’t, that’s something for you to strongly consider of if you are going to be working with them and why you want to work with them particularly. I find a lot of kind of companies that work with mental health and kind of other practices where HIPAA is required, this is the standard part of their onboarding piece. Now, mind you, it usually is part of their paid program. For example, Zoom. You’re not going to be getting a BAA with Zoom on the free program. However, if you do upgrade to the premium service, that is a part of their agreement. Same thing with Google versus Google Suite. Regular Google does not have a BAA versus Google Suite the professional version does. Simple Practice also has a BAA with it. I’m trying to think of any other ones off the top of my head that I use. I think for Alma, I believe had the BAA with it right off the bat that I didn’t have to ask for. That is all that is coming to mind off the top of my head. Now, there might be people that are outside of that that are frequently having kind of access to privileged information. For example, an accountant, right? That would be another person to sign a BAA with a clinical supervisor or peer supervision might be something to consider especially if Private health information is being shared. Even as far as this might sound silly, hear me out for a second. Even office personnel, whether that is an assistant, an administrator, or a housekeeper, can technically access these records. So, if you have an office that does paper records and the chart is unlocked, and you have a custodial crew coming at the end of the day, if they come across a piece of paper, this basically is saying, “hey, what you see here stays here” kind of thing. If there is a breach, the liability, I mean, it’s still on you a bit for leaving the paper out, don’t get me wrong, but they share some of that burden if they go out and then share it to the press or something like that. Request they signed an agreement where they said that they would not, whereas if you don’t have that in place and they find something and they leak it, well, now it’s definitely all on your shoulders. I mean, it was a large part before. You should always have your records in a secure location, locking key. They shouldn’t be just lying around throughout the day, but I mean it’s not uncommon to have business personnel interacting with day-to-day activities during working hours. So when in doubt, it’s always kind of important to have it just in case. For those of you who are going to be doing a telehealth exclusive practice from home, don’t think that you’re excluded from this. Again, there are people like your accountant, anybody that kind of helps with the technology piece of it and it’s having access to the private information that very well might include your spouse. Especially if you’re looking to just C.Y.A. to make sure you’re protected, if you are having sessions and you’ve done all the sound proofing, but you want to be triple sure that everything stays here from a legal perspective, just have your spouse sign it. It sounds crazy, it sounds paranoid, it probably a little bit is, but I prefer to work on the philosophy of better safe than sorry. So literally a piece of paper, it’s signed, it’s not like you’re signing your soul away, but it’s basically them acknowledging that private information stays private and if there is a breach that they will let you know. This way you can identify the clients as appropriate.

Again, it sounds really scary, not very scary in reality. It’s a very common form for this field. There are samples if you Google “Be a sample agreements”, a whole bunch will pop up throughout the internet, so I wouldn’t worry too much about the template piece of it in particular. Hello again, so how was that? Hopefully informative and not too scary. I know things legal and paperwork wise can really get the heart fluttering and feel overwhelming, but I promise you once you get in it and once you start working with these things on a daily basis, you can see they’re a lot more bark than they are bite. So I’m hoping that this kind of eases some of your anxieties, builds that confidence level that you can do this. If you have more questions in related to how do you start your private practice and what other things are involved, please join me for my mini lesson on “Stress Less About Starting a Private Practice”. I will link to that below so you can check it out for yourself, learn all the behind-the-scenes tips, tricks and things that I did to get my business up and running. It’s going to include all the kind of businessy legal stuff, how do you register for things like EINs and NPI numbers and what those even mean, as well as giving an outline of what paperwork, what are the processes that you need to do to get your business off the ground. So again, I hope this is really helpful advice. I want to give you kind of a little tidbit to give you an idea of the world that you’re going to be diving into. And if you’re interested in that training for more detailed information on this and other topics, I will link to that below so you can join us. And I can’t wait to see what you build. Take care for now. Bye-bye, guys.

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As a marketing coach and mentor for mental health professionals, I specialize in helping therapists grow their practices through authentic and ethical marketing strategies. By focusing on blogging, SEO, and email marketing, I guide therapists to attract clients who genuinely resonate with their expertise, fostering meaningful connections and long-term success. My mission is to support you in building a practice that not only thrives but also remains sustainable and fulfilling—without the stress and burnout that often come with the journey.

Below is a sample of what I have to offer, if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me via email at hello@stresslesstherapist.com.

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