As medical students have now returned to all the clinical rotations, thank you everyone for welcoming them back. You have all done such a wonderful job accommodating and educating them. Students are now participating in overnight admissions and the feedback from them has been extremely positive. Our hope at the DOM education task force is to continue offering overnight/evening shifts to ensure students are comfortable conducting H&Ps.
The students are receiving regular reminders from the school of medicine (SOM) about universal pandemic precautions and appropriate use of PPE. Medical students are currently not involved in the care of COVID-19 positive patients or those under investigation for COVID. However, as some students will care for COVID positive patients during residency, there will an option for some fourth-year students to opt-in to care for these patients.
The school of medicine has been working on platforms that are approved for sharing protected health information. These platforms would help expand our ability to involve learners in patient care while maintaining social distance. The information is available on the website link below:
https://www.med.unc.edu/it/services/video-conferencing/conferencing-policies/
Platforms Approved for Sharing Protected Health Information (PHI)
- School of Medicine Webex – Approved for transmitting and recording PHI. Recordings are securely stored in and streamed from the cloud.
- Zoom HIPAA Sub-Account* – Users whose primary affiliation is with the School of Medicine should be placed into a Zoom account approved for the transmission of PHI. Local recording only. When PHI is involved, you can only record to a School of Medicine managed computer that has been set up for PHI use. Participant reporting is not available in the Zoom HIPAA sub-account.
- Zoom Webinar HIPAA Sub-Account* – Users whose primary affiliation is with the School of Medicine should be placed into a Zoom account approved for the transmission of PHI. For webinars, you must use the default Zoom Webinar settings (or settings described in Zoom’s documentation as protecting PHI. See Zoom’s HIPAA Documentation as of April 20, 2020.
*If you are not sure if you have a Zoom HIPAA Sub-Account, you can visit your Account Profile page to determine if you have one. The account name will display “School of Medicine – HIPAA” and the account alias will display “SOM – HIPAA Enabled.” - Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams chats and calls are HIPAA compliant. Please refer to this link for Office 365 Sensitive Information Guidelines.
Sharing Tier 3 Information Other Than PHI – Before sharing Tier 3 information other than PHI (e.g. Social Security numbers, payment card information), please consult with the School of Medicine Information Security and Privacy Office.
Virtual Care Operations should be performed under the guidance of UNC Health. Please refer to the VCC intranet site for updates and resources.
As a reminder, a platform being HIPAA compliant does not mean your specific use of it is appropriate for sharing or protecting PHI. You still need to consider all HIPAA guidelines and policies for sharing PHI. Here is a link to the UNC Chapel Hill Privacy of Protected Health Information Policy.
For more information, please contact the School of Medicine Information Security and Privacy Office.
Koyal Jain, MD, MPH and Ashley Henderson, MD
Directors of Undergraduate Medical Education
UNCDepartment of Medicine