Corporate Culture Archives

Our health privacy

September 5, 2023 by Andrea

What does corporate use of consumer data have to do with therapy?

How do I make sense of how my personal data is being bought and sold in the world wide web marketplace?

What does all that have to do with counseling?

Phenix is about holistic health – working with you to address mental and emotional health while connecting that journey to your body and spirit. Every now and then, a “random” issue comes along that intersects with our work. For example, we posted last week on the approaching hurricane, not because we are weather experts but because we see the mental and emotional health dynamics associated with storms. Today’s post on data privacy may seem outside the scope of mental health content but hang with us…it does intersect and it does matter.

Our clients are aware that we use an electronic health record (EHR) platform called Simple Practice. Not only are health care providers strongly encouraged to use an EHR (required if they accept Medicare/Medicaid funds), but as a telehealth practice, an EHR is a basic necessity. One of the principles we have adhered to since founding is to utilize tools and solutions which honor the privacy protections of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). That said, HIPAA standards represent the minimum level of care. As therapists, we operate at a much higher ethical standard based on our role as stewards of our client’s information. Our clients trust us to protect their vulnerability as much as possible and we take that responsibility seriously. With those values, recent developments are causing concerns that we want to share with those who invest in their health through therapy (whether our client or not).

On August 2nd, our EHR provider released a new terms of service document which aggressively required signature within two weeks to retain access to all of our client care information. This was the first red flag to indicate that clearly, this company does not understand the legal access requirements for medical records. Most of us pay little attention any more to the terms of service agreements that we all “click the box” for nearly every day. We’ve all probably joked about possibly signing over our first born without knowing it…The thing is, terms of service are fairly standard for general tech companies but healthcare companies must operate very differently. Some clinicians were tipped off by the inappropriate presentation and started reading the new terms of service. Within days, a firestorm erupted with clinicians raising concerns in multiple online communities. The new terms claimed rights to user data which did not sensibly align with what should be needed just to provide the service we are paying for, and clinicians weren’t having it! This resulted in the company backpedaling slightly…extending the deadline for agreement and entering into the compliance review process they should have completed before setting up the terms. The easy answer would seem to be – just find a new provider. Unfortunately, the problem is bigger than this one company…

In the past decade, a quiet war has been unfolding in technology. Capitalists long ago discovered the profit in monetizing data. Most of the technology tools we use today are based on this practice of offering a ‘free’ service, (social media, email, web search, cloud storage, etc.) in exchange for access to data that can be aggregated and sold to the highest bidder. This purchased data allows businesses to target us with advertising and offers, personalized to what we are searching for/interested in. Investors have found more and more spaces and creative ways to entice us to hand over data they can monetize. About ten years ago, venture capitalists discovered the health care industry as an unmonetized space and started moving in. Technology companies started offering online therapy way before COVID made it popular knowing that it allowed them to set up systems which could collect valuable data. These companies were launched and run by investors with zero healthcare experience. The problem is, monetizing healthcare data is illegal, resulting in over 7 million dollars in fines against one of them, for example. For a company raking in over a billion dollars annually (2022) though, that fine is simply the price of doing business. So the quiet war behind the scenes wages as tech experts launch healthcare companies daily with nary a clinician in their leadership hierarchy, leaving them out of touch with the ethical rules clinicians must follow. Therapists and medical providers have been sounding the alarm for years but the millions of dollars these companies have available to control the narrative and pay the fines is almost impossible to beat. What that means is that it is extremely difficult to find the technology tools we need, set up with full understanding of healthcare ethics and even healthcare law.

Trust and transparency is the foundation of the therapeutic alliance. What our service providers do with our client data (even when it is ‘deidentified’) matters to us. We see our role of stewarding client data as a sacred trust. While it may seem hopeless to expect today’s environment of corporate greed to prioritize privacy over profit, we have a responsibility to keep fighting. What that looks like for us is participation in the collective pushback on our EHR provider to: practice the Safe Harbor Method in deidentifying data, legally commit to respecting the intellectual property rights of clinicians who customize EHR features, as well as to disclose the client portal access terms of service, how data is used for AI training, and what exact information is being sold to exactly what companies. Electronic Health Record software is not a free service. As a small practice, we pay over two thousand dollars a year, so imagine what more than 170,000 clinicians are paying (estimate of customer base for our current company)! Selling user data is not a necessary component of their profit strategy.

Additionally, we are taking the time to explore the alternatives. This is labor intensive and exhausting but necessary. We will look for tech companies run by clinicians, and who provide the ethical parameters our clients deserve. We have been strategic from the start in how we structured our processes. Our EHR happens to be a comprehensive practice management platform as well, capable of handling every technological need but we have never used it in that way. We use separate platforms for payment, messaging, video-meeting, etc. for two reasons: 1) We are not at the mercy of one platform if it shuts down for some reason, containing every tool we need to serve our clients and 2) Our client’s information can never be accessed in one complete package. While the companies who serve the healthcare industry have the greatest access to tech tools of confidentiality, perfection does not exist in this world and so we have structured things accordingly even before this latest concern. Moving forward, we will keep you updated every step of the way so that you have clarity about how your records are stored, accessed and managed.

Filed Under: Mental Health Tagged With: Boundaries, Business, Corporate Culture, Counseling, Leadership, Psychotherapy, Telehealth, Teletherapy, Therapy

Business Success

June 16, 2018 by Andrea

**This is the second in a two part series. Click here to read the first post.***

Intelligence and knowledge are so common these days that we can’t trade on just those anymore. Emotional intelligence, applied to corporate culture design is now the factor that sets you apart and is the key to longevity. Yesterday, we defined business smarts as the usual trifecta: strategy, marketing and finance. ‘Smarts’ gets you in the door. Let us not minimize that. However, you need emotional intelligence to work the room. Here’s the cool thing: learning requires clarity and interest so organizations that focus on health automatically get smarter. Whaat?! Think about the airline in yesterday’s story. Their company has the smarts but smarter does not automatically lead to healthier since we are typically relying on expertise rather than creativity and relationships. It’s like a bank safe full of cash (smarts). Organizational health is the combination to access the safe.

Organizational health is an integrated and intentional approach to the things we already know matter, but usually attend to in isolation: team building, strategic planning, productive meetings. Reflect on my airline fiasco story from yesterday. Can you fathom the losses leaking from the bottom line daily? (Every member of our group ended up with a $500 flight credit. A credit I have been loathe to use as I NEVER want to sit on one of their planes ever again). Organizational health is ridiculously expensive to ignore! More importantly, the physical, emotional and mental toll on you when you work in an unhealthy culture is far too high a price to pay for short term gains.

As a counselor dedicated to holistic health – this is the factor that drives my passion for helping businesses design a healthy culture. Combine that with my 15 years in the corporate world in various positions of leadership, several years of higher education leadership plus seven years as a successful business owner and you have a uniquely qualified individual who understands both the business and psychological components of organizational culture. The fact that healthy organizations are more likely to increase productivity and profit is a nice bonus that pays the bills for all of us 🙂

To learn more about organizational health – check out this great resource:

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Business, Corporate Culture, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Purpose

Let’s talk business

June 15, 2018 by Andrea

**This is the first of a two part series. Link to the second post is at the bottom.**

After 30 minutes on the plane, we were all asked to get off as the mechanical problem identified needed further attention. We were a band of 25 people from Orlando heading to a connecting flight in Newark that would take us to the other side of the world for a study abroad course. This was not a great way to begin our adventure. When the plane was still unfixed a couple of hours later, tensions rose. We began to abandon hope that we would be able to continue on together. However, as negotiations began to figure out how to get all of our members across the Atlantic, employees insisted that since our tickets had been booked as a group – they could not break up the reservation to split the group onto available flights. This, despite the very real mathematical problem of ZERO flights heading into Greece with 25 open seats over the next several days. The story is long and epic so I’ll offer the low-lights:

Due to employees’ inability to use common sense and creatively problem-solve, several flight opportunities passed before they finally realized they would have to split the group. One half was put on a plane to a connecting city. The other half was placed in a hotel for the night which turned out to have trouble with running water. The staff at the hotel commented that they are forever housing ‘refugees’ from this airline.
When the second group boarded their plane the next morning, they again had to deplane when a mechanical problem was identified. They eventually left on a different plane.
Both groups upon arrival in Frankfurt found that their reservation had not been properly transferred to the partner airline that was rescuing the flights and so they had no seats booked to our destination. Thankfully, this new airline did have a different organizational culture and a few nail-biting hours later, managed to book seats for every person….except one who ended up having to wait alone in a foreign airport for a later flight. It just so happened that she was the one student who had expressed a mortal fear of being separated from the group because on a trip she had taken in undergrad, a classmate was separated from the group and found murdered. We begged and pleaded for someone else to be left behind but already taxed by their efforts to fix the ticketing problem, they explained that because the original airline had not broken up the group booking in their system – they were unable to switch out any individual tickets.

This particular airline has been in the news numerous times over the past few years for GROSS mis-steps resulting in severe consequences. They are a perfect illustration of poor organizational health manifested in high turnover, low productivity (major fleet issues), politics which prevent employees from having the freedom to problem solve, confusion and low morale. The employees we encountered were clearly unhappy and we could not blame them. The public remains puzzled as to how these problems continue. A closer look at the players reveal experts in all the usual concerns: marketing, finance and strategy. Clearly, the problem is not smarts. So what is it?

Organizational health. I’m not talking bean bag chairs and napping rooms here. It’s hard to describe; difficult to measure objectively, but you KNOW when it’s good (Southwest) and you KNOW when it’s bad (the airline we were on). It’s a simple concept but it’s incredibly complex to implement. Finance, Strategy and Marketing (smarts) are the what. Organizational health is the how. The way in which you implement and maintain budgetary management, goal setting, and telling the corporate story – that is organizational health. That strays into emotional and awkward territory which is why it is typically skirted over in management schools (or spoken of largely in intellectual terms) and avoided by most managers/leaders. Problem is, as organizational culture expert – Patrick Lencioni asserts: sustainable success is impossible without BOTH smarts AND health. Business leaders may want to stay in their ‘smart’ comfort zone but guess what?

Intrigued? Interested in learning what this looks like and how it applies to you? Stay tuned tomorrow for more…

Part Two

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Business, Corporate Culture, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Purpose

Doing

March 14, 2017 by Andrea

Experience is the greatest teacher they say… Whatever dysfunctions we have going on in our lives (and yes, we all have some) – we come by them honestly. None of us wakes up one morning and decides to be defensive, destructive, avoidant, etc. for no reason. We approach life based on the experiences we’ve had and the meanings we’ve made of them. When those meanings are no longer functional, that’s where therapy comes in. Together, we explore past experiences and how we interpreted them to identify the sticking points that cause negative results today. Then, we work together to re-examine those experiences and expand the meanings to understandings that lead to more positive ways of doing life. The healthy relationship formed in therapy provides a model for the rest of life and offers a safe base from which to go out and change our worlds for the better.

The work done in the therapy room is not effective without implementation into daily life. Healing requires doing. We must test out our new meanings, creating new experiences that will cement those meanings in our hearts and not just our brains. This is the terrifying part. It can be so comforting and enlightening to have ah-ha moments in therapy. “Whaaat?! That’s why I’ve always done that? Oh my gosh, this totally makes sense now!” Those insights are wonderful and make for much internal relief and de-stressing. But then….we have to act “as if”. If this new understanding is true, what do I do differently? This is where the terror comes in because it is a great act of vulnerability to go out into an unchanged world with our changed selves and trust that we will be successful.

Sometimes, this becomes a stumbling block for clients. It could be because we need to do more work on our own internal anxiety before we can take action. Often though, it is due to confusion about how to actually handle things differently. Isn’t it normal to need some practice with a new skill before we use it ‘for real’? This very basic truth about learning is why I believe therapy has to be active. Perhaps the most common technique is to role play anticipated situations/conversations. That is an incredibly valuable exercise as we get to form new words and even hold our bodies in different positions than we have before.

I am finding though, that there are plenty of additional ideas for experiential learning. Last week, I joined a team of colleagues at WinShape to participate in team building exercises with a facilitator who happened to be a therapist. As we funneled tennis balls through short plastic tubes, held mousetraps in our joined hands, and moved a bowling ball without touching it, I saw so many connections between these activities and the principles that clients are often struggling to implement in their lives: Creative problem solving, collaboration, trust, believing they can do hard things, believing it is possible to do things differently than before, etc. Our activities culminated with a climb to the top of what they refer to as the “Pamper pole”. I’ll let you imagine why it has garnered that name. Let me just say that I have not experienced that level of terror in a very long time! Conquering it was the best thing that could have happened though, at a time in my life when I’ve been questioning my ability to rise to the amazing mission unfolding before me. It gave me absolutely tangible proof that I can dominate and that has already provided energy to move forward with the hard things. There is nothing like actual success to fuel further success. The same techniques I used to get through the exercises at WinShape are the same techniques I will use to power through the obstacles I face in the rest of my life. That is how this works.

I am so excited to bring these kinds of activities back to my clients. Not just individual sessions, but family sessions, groups and especially corporate workshops. I have a passion for leadership development and building corporate culture, so this approach fits perfectly! I do promise however, not to utilize 30 foot telephone poles 🙂

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Adventure Therapy, Corporate Culture, Counseling, Executive Coaching, Family Therapy, Group Therapy, Leadership, Organizational Culture, Psychotherapy, Rebirth, Transformation, Workshop

Leadership Calling

August 14, 2016 by Andrea

Last week, I attended the Global Leadership Summit put on by Willow Creek Association. It has been an annual tradition for several years now as I have a passion for leadership. When I started attending, I was the Director of the largest department in the Student Development division of the university where I worked. That first experience was such a tank filler and I’ve been hooked ever since. With responsibility for six staff members…all strong and diverse personalities – each handling the tasks of what would be an entire department at other schools, I often referred to my job as “herding cats”. I saw my main role as equipping/empowering my staff to do the difficult work cut out for them as well as fostering relationships across the campus needed for my team to accomplish their mission: facilitating student success. It was an exhausting position but I loved my work and more importantly, I loved my staff. The founder of the Summit – Bill Hybels said “Everybody wins when a leader gets better”. He has said it every year since and I absolutely believe that is true! I knew that any effort I made to understand myself better, to hone my skills and to gain insight into the sacrificial work of leadership would pay off mightily for my staff.

I have not been responsible for a staff since I started teaching in 2012. In some ways, I miss the nurturing aspect of leadership….the joy of investing in the growth of my staff. However, I now have 100+ students I get to lead (in our program) and so I continue to attend the GLS.

As I reflected on the many insights gained at this year’s event, one stood out as the most affirming and inspiring: In his opening talk, Bill Hybels stated that today’s workers are coming from largely dysfunctional homes/backgrounds but as leaders, we have the opportunity to rewrite their story line in how we lead and love them well. That really struck a chord with me. I suppose that’s because as a therapist, this is how I work with clients. I understand that the relationship I build with the client is the main channel through which healing flows. I had never really thought of it in that way though, when it came to those who work for me or study under my tutelage. My hope is to build Phenix into an organization in which other therapists will thrive and grow. I am already investing in that future. I quickly realized that my investment is rewriting the storyline and that was an amazing feeling!

Isn’t this a wonderful (yet terrifying) concept?! How we lead can positively change the trajectory of a person’s life forever. Or, we can reinforce the dysfunctions they have come to know. We get to offer redemption by crafting a healthy organizational culture. One fueled by love, vision, passion and purpose. This gives a whole new spin to the meaning of leadership. It is a high calling. May I say, even sacred? I don’t know about you, but this is the kind of leader I want to be and I am excited to help other leaders in that quest as well!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Corporate Culture, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Culture