What Happens When Doctors Are Texting Confidential Information?
Sending a text message is immediate, easy, time-saving and direct. However,
the Joint Commission has prohibited the practice of text messaging by licensed
healthcare practitioners for the past five years, in the interest of security risks.
Because without appropriate safeguards, texting can lead to violations of the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Physicians have incorporated smart phone technology to connect with
colleagues and to access healthcare information. According to the HIPAA
Weekly News Report in the HIPAA Journal, the restriction has now been
rescinded with immediate effect, but, there are stipulations.
The same convenience that makes texting appealing, can produce privacy and
security violations, if messages holding protected health information (PHI) are
not properly secured. Standard text messaging is still banned because
encryption is not used, there are no authentication checks confirming that only
the intended recipient will see the communications, and the original messages
cannot be retained to authenticate data entered in the medical records.
When the ban was applied, there were few possibilities existing to permit the
confidential data to be communicated securely. Now there are many secure
messaging platforms presenting all required limits to safeguard that PHI is not
accidentally released to unauthorized entities and remains secure, always.
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