HPA Behavioral Health Convention

This presentation offers a broad overview of the ethical risk management issues in telebehavioral health.
 
RATIONALE: Uninformed behavioral professionals have been flocking to direct contact with clients/patients through their own websites or responding to solicitations from Internet-based provider companies. Emboldened by easy paychecks and a lack of disciplinary actions by regulatory boards, these behavioral professionals are unaware of how they are putting clients/patients at risk. They haven’t considered their legal and ethical mandates for licensure, informed consent, proper intakes, mandated reporting, detailed documentation, referrals, emergency planning and termination –all of which are required in all forms of practice, whether it is online or offline.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: This innovative, fast-moving yet overview will provide a snapshot of telebehavioral health laws and evidence-based techniques required by a variety of ethical codes of relevance to the audience. Legal issues covered will include licensure, informed consent, mandated reporting, malpractice carriers, HIPAA, HITECH, privacy and confidentiality. Ethical issues will include boundaries, competence, documentation, handling emergencies, termination and referrals. Discussions will include examples of skills needed to practice/supervise using videoconferencing. Handouts and references will be provided for audience members. Attend this program to glimpse how you too, can legally and ethically leverage the power and reach of legal and ethical telehealth to lower your overhead, reach more people, and increase your profits – often from home!

EDUCATIONAL CONTENT: The presenter will define telebehavioral health terminology, introduce basic concepts, review the research history; outline risks and benefits and be introduced to the Telebehavioral Health Interprofessional Competency Framework. Meta-analyses will be reviewed as per recent data accumulated by Hilty and colleagues (2014). Current state laws and professional association standards and guidelines, as well as recently published telebehavioral health competencies will be mentioned (Maheu et. al., 2017). Ethical code referenced during the workshop will those published by the American Psychological Association. Participants will be given links to a list of vendors who offer HIPAA compliant video conferencing other technologies. They will also be given access to more than 1,000 evidence-based references of direct relevance. The 90-minute version of this program allows the audience to ask questions for 10 minutes.
 
Learning Objectives: 
Identify at least 3 basic definitions used in telebehavioral health
Intelligently discuss at least 3 primary legal concerns to be addressed in telebehavioral health
Intelligently discuss at least 3 primary ethical concerns to be addressed in telebehavioral health