HIPAA rules underlie every service related to behavioral health, and they change to meet evolving trends. There are potentially catastrophic organizational and individual consequences if the current HIPAA rules are not followed. This course will help you to identify potential legal and ethical issues related to HIPAA, improve your compliance approach, and develop more effective risk management strategies.

The goal of this course is to assist alcohol and drug counselors, marriage and family therapists, professional counselors, psychologists, social workers, and nurses in health and human services settings in understanding and applying current HIPAA regulations.

All healthcare professionals must be aware of bias and the challenges that bias can create in healthcare. This includes knowing some of the challenges people face with the healthcare system. In this course, you will learn best practices to help recognize and manage bias.

Within healthcare, a patient with limited English proficiency (LEP) is an individual whose primary means of communication is not English and who has a limited command of the language in reading, writing, speaking, or understanding (Office for Civil Rights, 2016). These patients need the careful attention of healthcare personnel to ensure the safety and quality of care. Healthcare professionals should understand regulations and standards related to patients with LEP, such as the use of an interpreter for communication.

The goal of this educational program is to improve the ability of the healthcare team to provide quality care and better outcomes for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP).

Most healthcare professionals strive to provide equitable treatment, but unconscious biases can still influence clinical decisions, leading to disparities in diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. This course explores how implicit bias develops, its impact on healthcare delivery, and strategies for recognizing and reducing bias in practice. The goal of this course is to educate healthcare professionals in all settings on implicit bias.

Cultural competence in healthcare refers to the delivery of quality care. It refers to meeting the needs of people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and those from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Cultural competence must be a two-way system to benefit people with differing beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors. This course discusses cultural competence and how organizations can use cultural competency to create an atmosphere of inclusion.

Today's workforce is increasingly diverse. Supervisors must be able to work effectively and respectfully with people from a variety of cultural backgrounds. In this course, you will learn about various dimensions of culture. You will learn what cultural competence is and how you can become more culturally competent. You will also learn how culture and cultural competence affect your relationship with the staff members you supervise.

As the population of the U.S. soars in diversity, healthcare professionals must be prepared to care for childbearing families from many different cultures. All cultures and families should be given the same respect, be assured of the highest quality of care, have their religious, ethnic, and cultural values respected and integrated into their care, and have their physical and educational needs met in a way that honors their spiritual beliefs and individuality. Knowledge of the cultures one is serving and the influence they have on women’s perceptions of childbirth are important for achieving positive outcomes. Equally and perhaps more important is applying the principles of cultural humility to nursing care.

The goal of this continuing education course is to improve the ability of nurses and health educators in acute care settings to assess and meet the sociocultural needs of childbearing families of diverse cultural and social groups. 

Health inequities in pain management are prevalent across different healthcare settings. The cultural, ethnic, and social differences influence patients’ and providers’ perceptions and responses to pain. Several studies report higher incidences of pain, disability, and suffering in women and people of color compared to non-Hispanic White people. This course covers influential sociocultural factors grouped into the patient, the provider, and systemic factors. This course helps healthcare professionals become familiar with cultural differences associated with pain perceptions and management. Pain variables such as culture, religion or ethnicity are not part of standardized pain scales. Healthcare workers need to provide culturally competent care to their patients by asking about specific practices, beliefs, and values regarding pain that impacts the patient’s quality of life.

The goal of this course is to provide nurses, physicians, and social workers with an overview of cultural sensitivity in the management of pain.

Understanding privilege is a step toward increased empathy. It helps to foster a more inclusive culture. People often associate privilege with one gender identity, one race, or wealth. The truth is, we all have privilege to varying degrees. This course will help you understand what privilege is. It will help you understand how privilege affects different individuals and groups.

Diversity presents both challenges and opportunities. This course discusses the benefits and challenges of diversity. It also discusses how to avoid discrimination toward those you work with and provide care for. This course provides healthcare employees with education on diversity.

Economic stability is defined as a domain of social determinants of health in the Healthy People 2030 campaign. It relates to an individual’s ability to access resources such as food, adequate housing, and healthcare. Each component of economic stability, including poverty, employment, food security, and housing stability, is linked to individual health outcomes.

In an emergency department, information often flows amongst providers and patients quickly because of urgent, sometimes life-threatening, situations. Due to the volume of information being shared, as well as the need for it to be shared quickly and accurately, emergency department providers must be especially careful to safeguard patient information.

The goal of this course is to update nursing professionals in the acute care setting with basic information about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and 42 CFR Part 2.

This course, which was designed to comply with HIPAA law, will help you protect the privacy of the people you provide care for. Allowing unauthorized individuals to see a person’s personal health information can have severe consequences for you and your organization, even if it happens by accident.

The goal of this course is to provide post-acute care staff with basic information about the principles of confidentiality, privacy, and security.

Healthcare practitioners greet, assess, screen, treat, and refer LGBTQIA+ individuals every day. Some may understand the unique needs of this population. However, more information and education are needed to ensure that people are represented in research and are treated with respect and dignity when receiving healthcare. This course discusses barriers LGBTQIA+ people face in accessing healthcare, along with the physical, mental, psychosocial, and cultural factors that affect their health. It provides practical strategies for providing sensitive, informed, and inclusive care. The goal of this course is to provide healthcare professionals with education on health disparities in the LGBTQIA+ community.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly called HIPAA, protects the confidentiality and security of healthcare information. HIPAA creates and protects individual privacy rights for protected health information and governs the use and disclosure of that information.

The goal of this course is to provide all staff with an overview of the principles of HIPAA.

The content of this course is sourced from 45 CFR Parts 160,162, and 164 (2020) or HIPAA-related resources from the Health and Human Services (HHS) unless otherwise noted.

Social media and other forms of electronic communication allow people to instantly share pictures and messages with anyone, anywhere. But as the opportunities to share information online have increased, so have the challenges for keeping information private.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, was designed to protect individuals’ rights and their personal healthcare information. HIPAA applies to both the storage and transfer of electronic protected health information, so these electronic communications must be handled carefully.

All healthcare organizations must follow a specific HIPAA rule, known as the Privacy Rule. This rule limits the use and disclosure of protected health information, known as PHI. The Privacy Rule also grants people the right to view and correct their medical records, receive copies, or request that copies are sent. The goal of this course is to provide all staff with knowledge of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

The use of technology has bloomed in the healthcare industry. While technology’s use has improved the delivery and continuity of care, it increases the chance that an unauthorized person will be able to access individuals’ protected health information, or PHI. Therefore, to protect electronic PHI, your organization is required to follow a specific HIPAA rule, known as the Security Rule.

The goal of this course is to describe the Security Rule and ways you can prevent breaches.

This course will teach you about the various types of child abuse and neglect that are currently the most common, and the physical and behavioral warning signs that may accompany different kinds of child maltreatment. You will learn some general guidelines for mandatory reporting and how you can find out the specific reporting requirements of your particular state.

Multicultural care helps reduce behavioral health disparities, build trust, and improve outcomes for marginalized clients. This course explains key concepts that support multicultural care and core components of culturally responsive care. It also indicates how to address personal and institutional bias in healthcare settings. 

Almost 95% of all maternal mortalities happen in low and lower middle-income countries (World Health Organization, 2023). However, the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among all developed countries. Approximately 700 patients die each year in the U.S. due to pregnancy complications and nearly 85% of those deaths are preventable (Hill et al., 2022). Furthermore, the AMA and CDC state that Black and AIAN patients are 3 to 5 times more likely to die from maternal complications than White patients (AMA, 2023). Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, and low-income populations are also at significantly greater risk of poorer maternal outcomes. However, in the past few years, global and national advocacy initiatives have set their philanthropic and financial radar on improving maternal outcomes in these vulnerable communities.

Pain is often underestimated and undertreated in the pediatric population due to many factors. As a result, children’s health outcomes are directly impacted without proper recognition and pain management, and quality of life is reduced. Physicians and nursing professionals must learn to assess and treat pediatric pain appropriately while caring for hospitalized children. This course describes the past and future status of pain management in children, pharmacological and non-pharmacological management options, and the complexities of managing pain in special populations.

Pediatric ambulatory care consists of well-child checks, preventive care, and the treatment and management of acute and chronic health conditions. Nurses provide holistic care to the pediatric patient by synthesizing their nursing assessments with parent/caregiver concerns. Nurses collaborate with the healthcare team to identify and address common pediatric health problems encountered in the ambulatory care setting.

Health outcomes are influenced in myriad ways by an individual’s social environment and their community. For example, community is linked to such outcomes as body mass index, homicide rates, and suicidal behavior (Diez Roux & Mair, 2010; Bharmal et al., 2015; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). Due to these strong influences on health outcomes, the U.S. Department Health and Human Services Healthy People 2030 campaign identifies social and community context as a domain of the social determinants of health. Social determinants of health are external conditions which exist with the potential to affect a patient’s current and future health, often beyond a patient’s direct control. Of particular importance, however, is how this domain fits into the larger picture of the social determinants of health. The elements in the social and community context have been shown to help negate potentially negative consequences of the other social determinants of health (Bharmal et al., 2015).