Virtual meeting options like Zoom should always be considered when an in-person discussion is not necessary. But depending on the topic, these meetings can be tricky. For example, can providers discuss patient information over Zoom? And if so, how?
To answer these questions and more, Health Care Information Systems (HCIS) put together a short how-to list below.
HIPAA information
Zoom is considered a secure platform to use with the default settings (such as creating a meeting invite with Zoom in Outlook). However, employees should not record any meetings that could possibly contain HIPAA-protected information. UICapture (Panopto) is not approved for storing HIPAA-protected information.
Note: Zoom should not be used for telemedicine visits with patients. Vidyo or Epic Native Video are the platforms that UI Health Care uses for all telemedicine visits.
Additional security options
The meeting host has a variety of controls faculty and staff can use to secure the meeting.
- Lock the meeting: When in the meeting, hosts can select “Participants” in the bottom of the Zoom Window. In the pop-up box, users will see a button that says “Lock Meeting.” Once enabled, no new participants can join, even if they have the meeting ID and password.
- Password use
- If you select this option when creating a meeting, attendees will be required to put in the password when joining. The password is pre-populated in the join link.
- It is recommended that you require a password for any Zoom session involving a patient or their family.
- Expel a participant: When in the meeting, click “Participants” at the bottom of the Zoom window. In the pop-up box, users can hover over a participant’s name and several options will appear, including “Remove.” Selecting that option will remove that participant from the meeting.
- Attendee on-hold: If you need a private moment, users can put attendees on hold. The attendee’s video and audio connections will be disabled momentarily. To enable this feature, click on the attendee’s video thumbnail and select “Start Attendee On-Hold.”
Other host controls include locking screen-sharing, enabling/disabling participant recording, and disabling in-meeting chat.
Best practices
- It is especially recommended to use Zoom when:
- There are external participants outside of UI Health Care or the University of Iowa.
- There are over 100 meeting participants.
- Meeting participants are using a Mac.
- Polling/voting is required during the meeting.
- Staff should not log in to Zoom via Google, Facebook, or other social media options for business meetings.
- Chrome is the recommended internet browser for Zoom meetings.
- For larger meetings, it is recommended that a team of people be designated to provide support in different areas throughout the meeting.
- For example: someone identified to be the host, someone to watch and manage any chat items, someone to take attendance, etc.