Two Telehealth stories collided this week — and they're the perfect setup for what we've been covering all month.

It's the American Telemedicine Association's sixth annual Telehealth Awareness Week (Sept 20–26). The headline number: veteran trust in VA Telehealth just hit 91.1%, rising for a sixth straight year.

At the same time, CNN and the AP reported on FTC lawsuits against Hims & Hers, BetterHelp, and GoodRx for sharing customers' health data — including medication interests and, in some cases, information about users' sex lives — with Meta, Google, and other ad platforms, without real consent. One company allegedly marketed itself as "100% online, private and secure" while doing exactly that. A Yale analysis of nearly 50 Telehealth companies found less than a third required an actual video or audio visit before prescribing.

Here's the piece worth sitting with for this month's HIPAA and trust series: most of those companies aren't necessarily violating HIPAA.

Direct-to-consumer telehealth and wellness apps often aren't "covered entities" under HIPAA at all — they fall under the FTC's Health Breach Notification Rule instead, which is a different (and in some ways weaker) standard. Patients assume "Telehealth" automatically means HIPAA protection. It doesn't. That gap between what patients assume is protected and what's actually protected is exactly where trust gets built or broken.

For a small practice that IS a HIPAA-covered entity, that gap is an advantage — but only if patients actually know the difference. Telling them plainly ("here's what we do that a consumer Telehealth app doesn't have to") is a trust-builder, not just a compliance checkbox.

Worth asking this week: does your intake or consent process ever explain to patients what makes your telehealth setup different from a direct-to-consumer app? If not, that's a quick, high-trust addition.

Want a second set of eyes on your Telehealth privacy and consent language?Book a quick call with me and we'll look at it together.

Sources:

• ​Telehealth companies keep exposing their customers' medical data. What should they do? — ABC7/AP​
• ​Telehealth companies keep exposing their customers' medical data. What should they do? — CNN​
• ​Celebrating Telehealth Awareness Week 2026 — VA News​

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