Vital Stats
Relevant Product Characteristics
- This product does not appear to have been designed specifically with healthcare in mind. Note that many products that are useful and appropriate for health care professionals are not designed specifically with health care in mind.
What Is This Product?
Bench is bookkeeping software that has the capability to sync with your financial accounts including all major banks. At the start of each month, this sync automatically pulls your statements into Bench software and reconciles your accounts, categorizes your transactions, and produces your financial statements. Bench also provides support around bookkeeping questions. At the end of each month Bench sends you a review of your books.
Our Impressions
We contacted Bench as a potential customer; we indicated that we were a mental health provider and responsible for maintaining HIPAA security and privacy. Customer service assured us that Bench works with thousands of mental health providers to keep their clients’ information safe, and they provided a link to their Privacy Statement. They also indicated that their services do not collect PHI. We determined that this information provided to us was misleading as the potential for reports to contain PHI is high (e.g. client payment card info and check copies). When we asked Bench support about these examples they then let us know there is an option to delete this information from the records before sending it to them. We asked if Bench provides onboarding for health provider-specific training on how to best use their product in a HIPAA-secure manner. They indicated they share best practice methods if users ask for it. We found this problematic because potential users who are interested in using Bench’s services could be sold on this product without having all the information they need to use the product in a way that is HIPAA secure.
This product offers a free service tier or a free trial account:
We encourage all clinicians interested in this product to try out the free trial or experiment with the free tier to see if it suits your needs.
If you discover anything of concern that isn’t addressed in this review yet, please tell Liath about it at [email protected].
- Click here for the free trial or free service tier information→. Important note about Business Associate Agreements: This product does not seem to offer a Business Associate Agreement for the free trial or free service tier. Do not use client information when testing the product.
Caveats
Caveats are criticsms of the company or product that we feel are relevant to your risk management or other important considerations.
1) Bench does not conduct Business Associate Agreements
Bench does not offer Business Associate Agreements for its users. If you opt into using Bench and choose to delete PHI from your financial documents before sending them to Bench, you must analyze the risk of human error and the potential for some PHI accidentally not being deleted and sent to their software.
Notes
Notes cover points where the product can’t ensure compliance or ethical action for you. These help you know what your part of the compliance puzzle looks like when using this product. A high note count usually correlates with a feature-rich product, and not necessarily with a product that has problems.
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