Keeping Your Dental Practice's Social Media HIPAA Compliant

Derek Pearson is the VP of Business Development at Banyan, a company dedicated to improving social media performance for dentists. Here, he explains how to stay HIPAA compliant with your practice’s social media.

Interview Transcript (slightly modified for readability)

“The best tip I can give for a practice to stay HIPAA compliant is put a system in place that can be pretty automated. When things are automated, you don’t forget. You don’t lose track of what you’re supposed to be doing. Put a system in place and make sure that you’re following it consistently, that your team knows it.

We’ve created that electronically. Our technology allows you to take a photo, it prompts a HIPAA media release, and then you can share directly to your Facebook pages. Otherwise, you need the HIPAA compliance, the privacy form, the consent releases, you need all of those signed, you need to back them up, you need to scan them. It can be a tedious process for a dental practice and it can take up to 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes is a long time in a dental practice. You take a photo Monday, if it takes 15 minutes, it might not be posted until Friday. Look at technologies that can help eliminate the busy work of it and make it more efficient, like ours, and help you do social media in the right way.”