Do You Need to Build A Privacy Awareness Training Plan for Your Healthcare Practice?

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Meghan in Blog

Do You Need to Build a Privacy Awareness Training Plan in your Healthcare Practice?

A practical privacy awareness training plan will save time for clinic managers and privacy officers.

Employees and healthcare providers who keep privacy and security top of mind will contribute to increased patient satisfaction, improve privacy compliance, and reduce privacy and security incidents in your practice.

Privacy awareness training is more than a checklist when new employees are hired.

As an employer and health care provider, you are responsible to provide training to all your employees about privacy awareness.

Your privacy officer should have direct involvement in the planning and monitoring of the privacy awareness training. The privacy officer may also:

Facilitate training opportunities
Develop / contribute to policies and procedures
Monitor for compliance
Provide instructions
Implement specific projects

If you don’t provide the training – and if your employees don’t understand the policies – and there is a privacy breach, then the healthcare provider is more likely to be held accountable under the legislation and face penalties including fines and even prison!

Protect your organization and your patients. Equip your staff with the information they need to confidently and correctly handle personal health information. Healthcare businesses who want employee and supervisor level privacy awareness training to support key policies, procedures and risk management programs need a privacy awareness training program.

Quickly and Easily Build Your Privacy Awareness Training Plan For the Whole Year!

Effective training for adult learners suggest that we must re-enforce key concepts at least 4 times a year. This applies to privacy awareness topics, too.

Start your privacy awareness training at orientation and on-boarding of ALL of your team members, including healthcare providers.

Then, re-enforce the key concepts throughout the year with work aids, posters, a ‘training minute' at regular staff meetings or team huddles, and coaching during the work day.

When You Plan It, It Will Happen

Is this you? If you want something to happen, you schedule it in your calendar.

Planning is key to design and deliver an effective privacy awareness training plan for your healthcare practice.

Let me show you a quick and easy way to plan your privacy awareness training for the whole year!

In this 60-minute webinar, you will outline a privacy awareness plan for your practice.

Training plan theory
Training strategies
Privacy awareness training plan
Build your privacy awareness training plan for the whole year!
Resources you can use right away to start training

Register before February 17, 2023 to access the Replay

Build a Privacy Awareness Training Plan for Your Healthcare Practice

Register now to get access to the limited time replay and resources!

Yes! I want to attend the workshop

This Workshop Includes:

Live on-line training
Q&A with Jean Eaton, Your Practical Privacy Coach when you join the webinar live
Access to the replay for a limited time
Learning Resources Guide

Did you enjoy reading this article? You may also be interested in:

Do You Want To Be A Confident Healthcare Privacy Officer?

Keeping Privacy Active in the Minds of Clinic Staff

5 Low Cost Steps You Can Take to Prevent Employee Snooping

3 Parts to Every Privacy Awareness Training Plan

When we know better, we can do better…

Jean Eaton is constructively obsessive about privacy, confidentiality, and security especially when it comes to the handling of personal health information. If you would like to discuss how I can help your practice, just send me an email. I am here to help you.

Jean L. Eaton
Your Practical Privacy Coach
INFORMATION MANAGERS

healthcare, privacy awareness, privacy awareness training, privacy awareness training plan, privacy officer, privacy training

Do You Want To Be A Confident Healthcare Privacy Officer?

Posted on September 6, 2022 by Meghan in Blog

What Is a Privacy Officer?

A privacy officer is a key employee in a healthcare organization who is named by the healthcare provider (custodian) and assigned the responsibility to oversee all activities related to the implementation of, and adherence to, the organization’s privacy practices, and to ensure operational procedures are in compliance with relevant privacy laws. The Privacy Officer monitors employees and systems about how information is collected, used, and disclosed and access to identifying information.

A privacy officer may be known by other titles like privacy compliance officer or a security officer.

If your healthcare business involves the collection, use, and disclosure of your clients' and patients’ personal health information, a privacy officer is necessary in order to meet legislated requirements.

If You Don't Have a Privacy Officer

Healthcare practices without a privacy officer often experience confusion about how patients’ personal health information should be collected, used, and disclosed. Patients may complain about lack of access to their personal health information. Without a named privacy officer to assume the responsibility to implement and monitor reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards you are more likely to experience privacy and security incidents, privacy breaches, investigations, fines, and charges under the privacy legislation!

Here are some examples of what can happen if you don’t have a privacy officer:

In 2019, the British Columbia Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) conducted a privacy audit of 22 medical clinics. OIPC auditors examined 22 clinics and found gaps in privacy management programs at several clinics, including the absence of a designated privacy officer, a lack of funding and resources for privacy and a failure to ensure that privacy practices keep up with technological advances.
A complaint was made against a medical clinic with an employee suspected of accessing health information for an unauthorized purpose. The Alberta OIPC investigated and revealed confusion around the roles and responsibilities of privacy compliance among the custodians and the privacy officer. The OIPC determined that the custodian was in contravention of the regulation which requires custodians to ensure that their affiliates are aware of and adhere to the all of the custodian’s administrative, technical, and physical safeguards with respect to health information. (See Do You Know Where Your Policies and Procedures Are?)
Employees are not aware of privacy requirements and engage in snooping into personal health information. Consequences of employee snooping include firing, charges under the Health Information Act and court ordered fines, jail time, probation, community service and more. (See Snooping Conviction Earns 3 Years Probation )

Roles and Responsibilities

So, what does a privacy officer do? The roles and responsibilities of a privacy officer in a typical healthcare practices include the following:

Identify privacy compliance issues for the business.
Ensure privacy and security policies and procedures are developed and keep them up to date.
Ensure that everyone working at your clinic and your vendors are aware of their privacy obligations.
Monitor your clinic's ongoing compliance with privacy legislation like the Health Information Act (HIA) in Alberta.
Provide advice and interpretation of related legislation for the business.
Respond to requests for access and corrections to personal information.
Ensure the security and protection of personal information in the custody or control of the business.
Act as the primary point of privacy and access contact for staff, patients, vendors, regulators and other stakeholders.

Get the FREE Practice Management Success Tip, Privacy Officer Job Description Template.

healthcare, healthcare privacy officer, HIA, privacy officer, privacy officer training, webinar

When Your Patient Requests Tax Receipts

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Meghan in Blog

When Your Patient Requests Tax Receipts

Ever thought that someone might want to submit your tax returns for you?

No problem.

They will even collect your refund – their payday when they scam your personal identity.

Michael Kaiser Blog, Executive Director of Stay Safe Online, notes on his blog that tax cyber crimes are on the rise. The Tax ID thieves usually file returns early using the taxpayers' stolen personal information so that they can cash the refunds before the taxpayer can file their legitimate tax return.

We can help to prevent this theft when we implement proper release of information practices.

Help Your Patient Requests Their Information for Tax Receipts

It's tax time! When patients or clients ask you for their account statement information, take the time to ask them for photo ID and a proper authorization to disclose their personal information.

Help them to understand that you can release information to the patient or to another person (a spouse, for example) only with the patient's written authorization. Even ‘just' health care billing information is important.

You Care About Patient Access and Privacy for Tax Receipts

Show your patients that you care about the safety of their information by taking steps to make sure we are protecting their patient and client information.

This Practice Management Success Tip, Patient Health Information for Tax Reporting includes

Tips to help you implement this procedure
Template authorization form
Poster to quickly explain to your patients how your procedure helps to protect their privacy

Yes! I want the Poster and Procedure Template!

Practice Management Success

If you are a member of Practice Management Success, login and access the poster, procedure, and form template.

Not a member? Join today!

Did you enjoy this article? If you’d like to look at similar posts, visit these links:

Release of Information Checklist

Do You Know Where Your Policies And Procedures Are?

Why Do You Need Health Information Policies and Procedures?

Healthcare Policies And Procedures: Essential in EVERY Practice

New! Health Information Policy and Procedure Manuals

When we know better, we can do better…

Jean L. Eaton is constructively obsessive about privacy, confidentiality, and security expecially when it comes to the handling of personal health information. If you would like to discuss how I can help your practice, just send me an email. I am here to help you.

Jean L. Eaton
Your Practical Privacy Coach
INFORMATION MANAGERS

consent disclosure for tax, healthcare, patient access, patient access to information, tax cyber fraud, tax fraud

Build Your Authority, Appeal, and Profit as an Author

Posted on February 8, 2022 by Meghan in Blog

Build Your Authority, Appeal, and Profit as an Author

If you have ever thought about self-publishing, becoming an author-preneur, or if you want to publish in a traditional format, Linda Stirling can help you with that!

Would you like to help family members of your patients be better prepared to support your patient after treatments?
Would you like to coach your patients in between in-person visits?
Do you ever feel that you could help more people avoid / prevent illness if they just did this one thing that you specialize in?
Do you want your patients to be more compliant with the follow-up actions that will help them patients recover faster?
Would you like more referrals from other providers to your practice?

You can accomplish these goals when you build your authority, appeal, and profits as an author.

When it comes to writing a book, people are usually in one camp or another. The first camp thinks it’s easy and the second camp thinks it’s too daunting to tackle.

The fact of the matter is that both groups need strategies and with these strategies they can be successful.

Breaking strategies down into manageable nuggets is where authors find success.

Before you even consider strategies, however, you need to think about your why. That’s where the power of success lies. Once you are clear about your why, that gives you the mental energy to complete your book.

Linda will walk you through some of the essentials for creating a profitable book that represents you well.

My Takeaways – Build Your Author Platform

We are each looking for ways to give our clients more of us without giving more of our time. When you build your author platform, you can leverage your time to support your current clients and attract your ideal clients.

You have a big message to share. Your next step is to publish your message so that the people who need your expertise can easily find and be inspired by you.

There are many steps to publish and promote your book. I hear from many entrepreneurs who have published their book – and haven’t made any sales. You need a mentor like Linda Stirling will help you navigate the tricky path to publish, promote, and profit from your book.

Linda Stirling's #1 Tip to Healthcare Practices

Know your why! Click to Tweet

Listen To The Podcast – Build Your Authority, Appeal, and Profit an an Author

Build Your Authority, Appeal, and Profit as an Author| Episode #104. Expert tips with Linda Stirling on Practice Management Nuggets Podcast For Your Healthcare Practice.

Listen here: Practice Management Nuggets Podcast

Listen To The Podcast Here

Featured Guest: Linda Stirling

Linda Stirling Can Help You Build Your Authority, Appeal, and Profits as an Author!

Linda Stirling will walk you through some of the essentials for creating a profitable book that represents you well.

Get started right away with the free A Writers Strategy Guide: Your Guide to Breaking Free, Starting Right & Keeping On Track.

Download the free guide from Linda here

Linda Stirling has built her successful business by Guiding Writers to Prosperity and Visibility

Linda Stirling’s heart is in helping every writer she works with achieve his or her dreams, whether that’s through publishing their work through The Publishing Circle or teaching them to self-publish through The Publishing Authority.

Her coaching helped multi-award-winning author David Crow, author of the international bestseller The Pale-Faced Lie, reach sales of just under $30,000 per month with his book.

She helped author Lorena Angell take her series to an average of 60 sales per day from its previous 6 per day; sell her work in 47 countries, and rank alongside authors such as Stephen King, and George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones success.

Stirling also got the series optioned for film and television.

Many of the authors she’s published have achieved international acclaim.

#PracticeManagementNugget, author, content writer, healthcare, healthcare business, podcast, profits, self-publishing

Zoom In Healthcare Is Easy!

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Meghan in Blog

Using Zoom in Healthcare is Here to Stay

In healthcare, it is important that patients trust you before they will share their personal information, listen to you, and before they will carry out your treatment recommendations.

In telemedicine, your patients need to be able to see your face, hear your voice in order to trust you.

When you appear confident on camera during telemedicine call this will build trust with your patient and remove distractions so that your patient better listens to your advice.

This on-line training will help you become more confident using Zoom for meetings, virtual care, and telemedicine.

The Communicate & Meet With Zoom in Your Healthcare Practice course will look at the basics of both joining and hosting a meeting, as well as the difference between the free and pro plan options.

Communicate and Meet with Zoom Training in Healthcare Video Cover

Communicate and Meet Using Zoom In Your Healthcare Practice

Online training

Are you using Zoom for your Telemedicine or Virtual Care Encounters? Build trust with your patients when you confidently use Zoom to Communicate and Meet.

Ideal for physicians, dentists, chiropractic, physio, optometry – every healthcare professional who use Zoom for telehealth, virtual care, or team meetings!

25 step-by-step videos to get started quickly and be successful with Zoom
Bonus downloadable Zoom instructions for patients
Bonus training: Easily Improve Your Video Conference Presence with Lauren Sergy
Bonus: Virtual Care Workflow
Bonus: Virtual Background templates and training

New to Zoom?

If you are new to Zoom, I suggest that you follow the on-screen videos step by step.

If you are familiar with Zoom, and just need to dig a little deeper into the advanced settings or have specific questions, you can select the training that would most help you.

Note: This training is not specific to Zoom Healthcare; however, many of the features are similar between the public and the Healthcare versions of Zoom.

The Practice Management Success Tip, Communicate and Meet Using Zoom In Your Healthcare Practice, will help you

Gain your patients' trust.
Communicate confidently on-camera with your patients and your employees.
Document your new virtual workflow process.
Present yourself professionally.

Show Me Communicate and Meet Using Zoom In Your Healthcare Practice

healthcare, healthcare business, medical, physician, small business, Social Media for the Small Healthcare Practice, telehealth, telemedicine, template, videoconferencing, virtual care, zoom

Sharing Your Vaccine Status – Privacy Tips

Posted on July 19, 2021 by Meghan in Blog

Sharing Your Vaccine Status – Risks and Benefits

For the safety of yourself and others, schools, employers, or event organizers may ask you for proof of vaccination against the COVID-19 virus. It is your right to decide if you share your personal information with others.

Your personal health information can be misused to access services, apply for credit cards using your name, or other fraudulent purposes.

Throughout the pandemic, each of us have had to make decisions about our health safety and the risks and benefits of our actions. You can apply a similar risk and benefit approach to decide if, when and how you share your vaccine status.

Why Share?

Consider the purpose of providing your vaccine status.

Are you giving this information to a physician or nurse for your health care?

Before attending a concert or football game?

Is it a pre-requisite before you can attend school or a sports program?

You may also need to consider the benefit of sharing your vaccine status. If you want to travel out of country, a vaccine passport may be required for international travel purposes.

Protect your gold – your personally identifiable information.

If you decide to share your vaccine status:

provide the least amount of information needed.
know and trust the person (or the app) that you are sharing your information with. Remember, read the privacy policy!
understand how your information will be used.

Don't Overshare

Sometimes, answering the question ‘Is your vaccine up-to-date?’ is good enough. You don't always need to share your date of birth, family physician, and health care number, too.

You may be asked to show your proof of vaccine status, but don’t allow the casual requester to make a copy of the vaccination report. (There are some exceptions. Sometimes, you may need to share the information with your healthcare provider or a government official).

Instead, the requester can make a simple notation on their records that you were asked about your vaccine status, and you showed an appropriate proof of vaccination. (See the blog post How To Correctly Identify Patients And Use Photo ID for tips on how to implement this practice in your business).

If You Are Collecting Vaccine Status

If you are a business owner who is collecting personal information like a vaccine status, remember that you must follow the appropriate privacy legislation. In Alberta, private businesses must follow Personal Information Privacy Act (PIPA) legislation.

See the advice document from the Alberta Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) regarding the reasonable purpose to collect personal information and your responsibilities to keep the information secure.

How Do You Get Your Vaccine Report?

Most often, you will receive a paper confirmation from the healthcare provider at the time that you receive your first and second vaccine dose. In Alberta, you can also download your vaccine record from MyHealth Record, the Personal Health Record for Albertans to access some of their health information, such as lab results, medications, and immunizations drawn from Alberta Netcare.

I shared a short video here to show you how you can register for your own personal account. Some other provinces have a similar provincial electronic health record that individuals can access their own health information.

Keep It Safe

You will probably need to refer to your vaccine status often over the next few years. Keep this information safe and easy to retrieve.

Take reasonable steps to protect your information so that other people can't easily view or take your information without your permission. Will you keep your information in:

paper format?
your wallet or purse?
as a photo on your phone?
- If so, also consider how you will share the photo. If you give your phone to someone to hold and view the photo of your vaccine status or passport, they may also use the access to your phone for other purposes.
upload your vaccine status to a digital app?

Evaluate the Risks and Benefits

Remember to ask yourself why you need to share the information and evaluate the risks and the benefits. It's your information, and you get to decide if, when, and how to share your vaccine status. Take the time that you need to ask the right questions and make an informed choice.

After you share your information, it’s too late to take it back.

Instead, be prepared to respond to a request for your vaccine status with these privacy tips to protect your personal health information.

COVID-19, digital vaccine passport, personal health information, privacy, proof of vaccination, vaccine status

Mental Health Awareness and COVID-19 Workplace Strategies

Posted on July 12, 2021 by Meghan in Blog

We may have mastered the physical side of working remotely but what about the emotional side?

A year ago, Canadians were three months into the pandemic. We were through the initial shock of shutdowns and closures, but most of us were still trying to find our groove in navigating the “new normal”. For millions of working Canadians, this included a sudden and drastic transition to working from home or another remote location, physically isolated from coworkers.

While employees were sorting out logistics and the practical side of things, employers were scrambling to find innovative ways to bring employees together virtually, create a sense of camaraderie and keep morale (and productivity) high. Despite best efforts on both sides of the equation, there was an immediate impact on the mental health and well-being of millions of workers. Surely these would only be temporary challenges and set-backs.

With more than a year behind us working under these conditions, it might be natural to assume that employees have come a long way since we started down this path. In some respects, we have. After all, we have learned to adjust and “make do” with our displaced and reconfigured work environments and schedules. We’ve got the physical side of working from home sorted out, even if it’s not perfect.

Thanks to technology, we can connect to our work world from remote places better than ever. Stress and anxiety levels must be lower because it’s certainly not as tough as it was in the beginning.

Or is it?

Be Mindful of Your Own Well-Being

As we plan our new workplace and home environments, Corridor Interactive provides an on-line free resource, Mental Health Awareness & COVID-19 Workplace Strategies to help you.

While working from home has its advantages, and for many may be the preferred way to work in the post-pandemic world, we need to be mindful of aspects that can impact our mental health.

Corridor’s free Mental Health Awareness & COVID-19: Workplace Strategies course includes a module with insights and tips for supporting your mental health while working from home.

If you’re not in the habit of taking time out for yourself in the midst of juggling work and home responsibilities, make this the day you start to carve time out of your workday for your own mental health and well-being.

Read the full article from Corridor Interactive: COVID’s Mental Health Toll in the Workplace 56% of Canadians Stressed & Anxious

Read the article here

Re-printed with permission from Corridor Interactive

Corridor Interactive, COVID-19, mental health, mental health in the workplace, online training, pandemic, remote working, work from home

How To Build a Legal Foundation For Your Healthcare Practice

Posted on July 5, 2021 by Meghan in Blog

How To Build a Legal Foundation For Your Healthcare Practice

Many healthcare providers are excited to open their first independent practice but have many questions about how to build a legal foundation for their practice.

Corrine Boudreau of Online Legal Essentials can help you!

On the most recent episode of Practice Management Nuggets podcast, I interviewed Corinne Boudreau of Online Legal Essentials. Corinne has developed guided legal templates for Canadians doing business online.

Corinne has a knack for making things practical and easy to implement. Being a lawyer since 2002 has given her perspective and experience to boil things down to the essentials.

Corinne’s advice is that the essential business documents you need for a new healthcare practice are based on relationships. Relationships are triggers for business documents to help improve communication and set expectations – get it in writing!

For example:

Relationships with patients or clients

Terms of service and payments documents

Relationships with employees, contractors, associates

Hiring documents

Relationships with other healthcare providers in a group practice

Fee splitting and payment options
Cost sharing agreements

Relationships with landlords

Commercial lease agreements

Relationships with the public

Privacy policies including on your website
Copyright notices when you create and distribute your unique content

Your Big (or Small) Online Presence

Every practice needs an online presence of some kind. Maybe your brick-and-mortar local clinic only needs a simple business card presence to attract new patients and let them know how to find you. Or maybe you will offer virtual visits, online memberships or courses, or online sales of physical products. It is important to project yourself as a business owner by having a professional presence on your website – this includes having a privacy policy, copyright notice, disclaimers, and terms of use statement.

Should You Incorporate?

In the podcast, Corrine discusses corporate structure options for healthcare practices – including the difference between an incorporated business, partnership, or corporation business entities vs professional corporation when you are a member of regulated health profession.

Listen To The Podcast

What Should Healthcare Practices Know About The Legal Foundation For Their Business? | Episode #101.

Expert tips with Corinne Boudreau of Online Legal Essentials. Practice Management Nuggets For Your Healthcare Practice.

Listen To The Podcast Here

Templates Make It Easy!

You know that I love templates – and tips, tools, and training to make it easy!

Corinne delivers guided customizable templates to help you set up your business, operate your brick-and-mortar local business, or your online business!

Get started right away with the free Ultimate Checklist for Running a Business Online in Canada.

Download the free guide from Corinne here

#PracticeManagementNugget, dental, dental business, healthcare, healthcare business, legal, legal foundation, legal templates, podcast

What Does a Ransomware Attack Look Like to Patients?

Posted on June 14, 2021 by Meghan in Blog

What Does a Ransomware Attack Look Like To Patients?

One of my favourite podcasts is Help Me with HIPAA. This weekend I listened to Episode 304 Ransomware Creates a Social Media Privacy Violation Storm while I was spring-cleaning my yard.

Donna and David discuss in (almost) real time a ransomware attack that was currently occurring at the San Diego California’s main health systems, Scripps Health. The attack resulted in practically all of its technology being taken down. The EHR went down, patient portals were down, appointments had to be rescheduled, patients had to be diverted to other hospitals… even their website was down.

This podcast episode isn’t about the technology about ransomware. Donna and David walk you through the impact on patients – from the inconvenience and frustration to the disastrous consequences of not having health information available when it is most needed.

This gripping story reveals how communication failures, systems failures and a lack of information snowballed to negatively affect patients when they needed help the most.

My Takeaways From This Help Me With HIPAA Episode

Ransomware is nefarious and its impact is far-reaching.

Patient care is compromised – patient information is not accessible, and it is unknown what information can be retrieved and, if it is retrieved, if it is complete and accurate.
Privacy breach – obviously! The hackers have patient, employee and business information and have threatened to release it publicly.
BUT – employees are also continuously breaching privacy while they are responding to patient concerns on social media DURING the ransomware attack.
Employees cannot access their information to do their jobs – work schedules, payroll, portals to perform their jobs. So, alternate, unauthorized workflows are implemented to get the job done which subsequently results in more breaches.
While the press release from Scripps Health indicates that they have trained and prepared personnel, the communication from Scripps to patients, employees, and the public has been disorganized, conflicting, and continuously breaching privacy and confidentiality.

I urge you to listen to this episode (about 30 minutes).

Listen to the Help Me With HIPAA Podcast HERE!

[Start at 18:19 minutes]

What Would You Do?

How would you and your team respond to this type of privacy breach?

Share this episode with the members of your incident response plan. Then, use the scenario to conduct a table-top privacy breach fire drill using your privacy breach management plan.

These table-top privacy breach fire drills are a great demonstration of your commitment as an organization to ensure that you are protecting the privacy confidentiality and security of health information.

Now hop over and listen to the Help Me With HIPAA episode to better understand what a ransomware attack looks like to a patient.

https://helpmewithhipaa.com/privacy-questions-everywhere-ep-304/ [Start at 18:19 minutes]

Communication, healthcare, incident response plan, Patients, privacy, ransomware, ransomware attack

Positively Represent Your Healthcare Practice with a Dress Code Policy

Posted on May 20, 2021 by Meghan in Blog

Professional Appearance Positively Represents Your Healthcare Practice

Do you have a dress code policy in your healthcare practice? You might be in the front office or a healthcare provider. You might wear uniforms, lab coats, or business clothes. Regardless of your interaction with clients, customers, suppliers, contractors, or volunteers, the appearance of employees at your business supports your business image brand.

Patients and their families have reasonable expectations that their healthcare providers and employees at the clinic present themselves in a professional manner both in demeanor and appearance.

Why have a healthcare practice dress code policy?

Dress code policies, procedures and training will help to ensure a professional and consistent appearance of employees while also positively representing and supporting your business brand.

A policy provides guidance in making choices about clothing and appearance, for all staff.
The professional appearance of your staff supports the image and positive reputation of the clinic.
Use of uniforms and name badges creates a greater level of security and recognition for staff and patients.

What are some dress code guidelines?

General Guidelines:

If you do not have direct patient contact (i.e., billing clerk, consulting pharmacist, receptionist) wearing uniforms is optional. If you choose not to wear a uniform or lab coat, consider these guidelines when choosing clothes at the office:

Name Badges:

Help to identify you to our patients and clients.
Are provided by the clinic to each employee.
These are to be worn at all times.
If you are not wearing a name badge, you may be denied entry into restricted areas of the clinic.

Shoes:

Closed toes and closed heels or heel straps.
No high heels or built-up soles such that it could endanger yourself or patients.
Non-slip footwear.

Hair:

Clean and neatly groomed.
Long hair should be tied back during patient treatment or when operating machinery.

Clothing:

Clean, neat and in good repair and allows for full performance of all duties.
T-shirts and tank tops are not permitted. Polo shirts or styled cotton tops with pockets are acceptable. Discrete, non-inflammatory images and logos are permitted.
Sweatshirts are not suitable in direct patient care areas.
Tops need to be long enough and high enough to provide adequate coverage of abdomen, back and chest.
Fragrances should be avoided.
Jewelry, tattoos and body piercings must be discrete and provide no risk to the wearer or patient.

If you have direct patient contact (i.e., physicians, MOA, nursing, physiotherapist):

Clothing must meet infection control standards for the benefit of patients and to you and your family. The type of work that you do may require additional considerations.

No artificial nails are permitted.

In the interest of health and safety of our patients and our employees, no artificial fingernails are permitted. Artificial nails have been demonstrated to interfere with effective hand washing hygiene and has contributed to healthcare acquired infections.

When we know better, we do better

Download the Practice Management Success Tip, ‘Dress Code Policy'.

Discuss with your team the importance of professional attire and overall appearance.

The free Practice Management Success Tip, Dress Code Policy, will help you

Discuss with your team the importance of professional attire and overall appearance.
Review the professional work standards expected of each staff member, regardless of their role.
Guide discussions with your team, get their feedback and input, customize a procedure that you can use right away in your practice.

Show Me The Dress Code Policy

dress code, employee training, healthcare, medical, office dress code policy, policy template, Practice Management Success