Protecting Psychotherapy Notes
Answered
How do you keep psychotherapy notes private? It looks like Account Owners, Clinicians w/ Administrative Access and Supervisors are given access to both progress and psychotherapy notes. Is there any way to make psychotherapy notes ONLY visible to the clinician who wrote them?
-
Hi Alexis, I'd be happy to help. Progress and Psychotherapy notes can be viewed by clinicians in your account who have Full Client List access, Administrative Access, or are Account Owners. However, if the other clinicians in your account have Basic Access or Basic Access + Billing, they cannot view your Progress or Psychotherapy notes unless they are granted access to that client. Let me know if this helps clears things up.
-
I agree with Alexis. I have a several clinician who don't want to use the program because the notes are displayed right on the screen to the employees who have to have access in order to bill. The permissions on SimplePractice should be more detailed. I don't want my receptionist or my billing department staff looking at private notes.
-
The permissions granted to a scheduler or biller are not enough for my current receptionist, and billing department, because for patients who do not have computer access they have to enter their information manually. This is why I have to grant full admin access for all processes to work smoothly. From a group practice level, the permissions aren't the problem if only the notes could be seen only by the clinician who enters them, there would be no issues.
-
Two things...
First, it is my understanding that no one should be able to see psychotherapy notes except the clinician who wrote them. According to HIPAA, these notes may not be shared with another provider without written consent specifically addressing psychotherapy notes. This is in addition to the consent required to share progress notes and other PHI. A client may not even request access to these notes. This ruling is to allow clinicians to keep personal notes, thoughts, hypotheses, etc. about a client without those notes being open to scrutiny of anyone else. HIPAA demands that they are "kept separate from the medical record" in order to receive the additional protection provided for those "private" notes. It seems to me that having them visible on the same screen with with psychotherapy notes, with the same access restrictions, defeats the purpose of having that additional level of security.
Second... we are in the same situation with Yolanda that the permissions for Biller and Scheduler are not enough for our office manager who does all the scheduling, billing, and initial client set-up. She handles new clients intake paperwork and manages our client portal. It would be great to have more flexibility in selecting permissions for team members.
-
Hi Kathy,
I'm happy to provide some assistance here.
If you are looking to add an Administrator to your account you'll want to have the Professional Plan which allows free unlimited non-clinical staff and also allows you to add clinical staff for $29/month per clinician.
If you add your administrator as a clinician with Administrative Access, they'll l have access to view and create progress/psychotherapy notes for all clients. However, a clinician with Basic Access with Billing can only see their own progress/psychotherapy notes. For detailed information clinical access levels, please refer to this Help Center guide: Team members: clinician access levels.
-
I have another situation where this is a problem. We just added wellness services to our practice including massage therapy. The massage therapist DOES NOT need to be able to see the client's mental health notes but DOES need added as a clinician to that client's account so that they can provide services. Right now, as I understand it, the only solution is to either expose the clients private notes to the massage therapist, or have the client try to juggle two different client portal accounts. This needs fixed.
-
I would like to suggest that there be an option to upload documents to Psychotherapy Notes. Many clinicians take down paper and pen notes during session. It is a major drawback to have to transcribe these into Simple Practice. Can SP add an Upload Document or Attachment option to the Psychotherapy Notes section.
Thank you,
-
I would like to suggest that there be an option to upload documents to Psychotherapy Notes. Many clinicians take down paper and pen notes during session. It is a major drawback to have to transcribe these into Simple Practice. Can SP add an Upload Document or Attachment option to the Psychotherapy Notes section.
Thank you,
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
18 comments