Jason- I believe it depends on how your are being utilized. It would seem that as legal counsel you may be exposed to PHI when they are asking you to defend them in any litigation brought by a patient or if they are working against an insurance company for non-payment etc. The agreement should state that they require you to adopt their established HIPAA policies to protect the PHI that they disclose to you. So along with the agreement should be how they are placing utilizing reasonable safeguards in place and that you should do the same when using the PHI
That is my interpretation of what HIPAA says for us as a covered entity to do Craig Moen, MPT Director of Rehabilitation HIPAA Privacy Official THERAPY 2000 Confidential Information This email message is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed. Unless otherwise indicated or obvious by the nature of this transmittal, the information contained in this email message is privileged and confidential, intended for the use of the intended recipient (or the employee or agent responsible to deliver to the intended recipient), you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message THERAPY 2000 1881 Sylvan Avenue Suite 210 Dallas, Tx 75208 -----Original Message----- From: Jason Cantos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 12:24 PM To: WEDI SNIP Privacy Workgroup List Subject: business associate questions I work in a small law firm. A couple of our clients asked us to sign business associate agreements. These business associate agreements require the law firm to adopt HIPAA specific policies and procedures. Are there any business associates (law firms specifically) that are doing this? On an unrelated matter, the provider of our dental insurance asked us to sign a business associate agreement, with us as the business associate--I just don't see how we are a business associate in this situation. Thanks so much for your help. _________________________________________________________________ --- The WEDI SNIP listserv to which you are subscribed is not moderated. The discussions on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/. These listservs should not be used for commercial marketing purposes or discussion of specific vendor products and services. They also are not intended to be used as a forum for personal disagreements or unprofessional communication at any time. You are currently subscribed to wedi-privacy as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this list, go to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org or send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need to unsubscribe but your current email address is not the same as the address subscribed to the list, please use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org --- The WEDI SNIP listserv to which you are subscribed is not moderated. The discussions on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/. These listservs should not be used for commercial marketing purposes or discussion of specific vendor products and services. They also are not intended to be used as a forum for personal disagreements or unprofessional communication at any time. You are currently subscribed to wedi-privacy as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this list, go to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org or send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need to unsubscribe but your current email address is not the same as the address subscribed to the list, please use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org
