Google voice for clinical/research communication?

[psychanator]

Hey all!

Does anyone have experience with Google Voice, particularly for clinical purposes (or even at all?). I'm trying to find an easy way to communicate by phone with research participants or clinical patients to whom I do not want to give my personal number (and my office number is not ideal since I split my time between some many work spaces).

Is this a good idea? Feasible? Ethical? If this is not a good option, do you have suggestions for an alternative option?

Thanks!

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[Spydra]

I use GV for personal use and absolutely love it. I have no idea how I survived without being able to read my voicemail in my email or set up different voicemail messages for different people. I can certainly see the upside to using it for clinical purposes, but I am unaware of the ethical issues. If there are ethical issues then perhaps a low cost no contract cell phone will do? If you're just using it to call/text then a cheaper basic phone would work. You might also be able to get an affordable 800 number and just forward that to your current phone.

 

[WisNeuro]

E-mail google about whether or not it's HIPAA compliant.

 

[psychanator]

Thanks for the responses! I would definitely confirm that this is not a HIPAA violation (I'm in the process of investigating), I was curious to hear people's thoughts in the meantime since I don't know how the system works.

 

[Jxz]

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Is-google-voice-service-HIPAA-2246364.S.167422110

HIPPA-Compliant? Bottom line, probably not, but then again nothing commercially available is HIPPA compliant.

Good luck building your own email and voicemail server. Here's a hint: be sure to put it in Canada.

 

[oathkeeper]

I have used it for clinical purposes under the direction of places where I have worked; however I have also been at a clinic that does not allow it since the voicemails are transcribed and kept on a server

 

[SublimeNature]

I would echo what others have said about HIPPA compliance. I doubt GV is compliant and you can't predict the information that a client may leave on your voicemail that might be confidential. GV transcribes your voice mail to text or email for you, which is a lovely service, but not confidential for clinical purposes.

Unfortunately, I would say that any third party service like that, that uses cloud based storage is a possible confidentiality liability. They are storing the voice mail info on a cloud server till you access it and delete. Likely, this would be a HIPPA violation. I wonder, are there HIPPA compliant answering services and the like? There must be something like that somewhere.

Oh, and hello This is my first post.