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AI is rapidly becoming part of healthcare. A recent Pew Research Center survey highlighted by HIPAA Journal found that **72% of patients believe it is very or extremely important to know when their healthcare provider is using AI in connection with their healthcare.**

But there’s another side of this conversation that every healthcare manager should be thinking about:

**How are your employees using AI?**

An employee may think nothing of copying an email into an AI tool and asking it to draft a response.

Or pasting notes from a patient encounter and asking AI to summarize them.

Or asking it to help write a referral, explain lab results, create a patient letter, or troubleshoot an insurance issue.

The problem?

That information could contain **Protected Health Information (PHI).**

Not every AI platform is appropriate for handling PHI. Before employees enter patient information into an AI system, your organization needs to understand how that platform stores, processes, retains, and uses the information and whether the appropriate HIPAA safeguards and agreements are in place.

**“I was just using ChatGPT to help me write it” isn’t an AI policy.**

Covered entities should be establishing clear guidelines now:

🔹 Which AI tools are approved for business use?
🔹 Can employees enter PHI into them?
🔹 Has the organization evaluated the security and privacy risks?
🔹 Is a Business Associate Agreement required and in place?
🔹 Are employees being trained on acceptable AI use?
🔹 Who reviews AI-generated information before it reaches a patient?

AI can be an incredibly useful tool in healthcare. But convenience doesn’t override HIPAA.

If you manage a medical practice or other HIPAA-covered organization, **AI usage should be part of your cybersecurity policies, HIPAA risk assessment, and employee training.**

And if you haven’t talked to your employees about AI yet, there’s a good chance they’re already making these decisions for you.

Source: HIPAA Journal / Pew Research Center
https://www.hipaajournal.com/survey-patient-ai-use-healthcare/

#HIPAA #HealthcareIT #ArtificialIntelligence #Cybersecurity #HealthcareCompliance #PatientPrivacy #AI #HealthcareManagement