For healthcare providers, understanding HIPAA compliant email is an important part of patient communication in the digital age. The short answer to the question “is email HIPAA compliant?” is no. At least, not without putting strong cybersecurity protections in place alongside proper HIPAA authorizations. However, there are some simple solutions that can help your practice eliminate the issue of HIPAA compliant email and save your staff valuable time.
This article will provide a brief walkthrough of some of the things you can do when considering HIPAA compliant email options — or whether there are more efficient messaging solutions that can benefit your practice.
HIPAA regulation sets specific standards that healthcare providers must address in order to ensure the privacy and security of protected health information (PHI). PHI is any demographic information that can be used to identify a patient. Common examples of PHI include a patient’s name, address, date of birth, Social Security number, telephone number, financial information, insurance ID, or any part of their medical record, to name a few. Any PHI that is communicated in a digital format is considered electronic PHI (ePHI).
The HIPAA Security Rule sets technical safeguards that healthcare providers should have in place, particularly when sending and receiving any form of ePHI. Below, we discuss some of those HIPAA secure email requirements and how you can address them.
If your practice chooses to use email to communicate with patients, you may be putting yourself at risk of a data breach or HIPAA violation. Unfortunately, free email service providers cannot be used to transmit data in a HIPAA-compliant manner. That includes services like Gmail, Yahoo, or HotMail. These do not allow users to implement the suitable security settings for sending or receiving ePHI, and should be avoided.
Some of the requirements for making your email HIPAA compliant include:
Understanding your HIPAA requirements regarding the use of email to share patient information is critical to protecting your practice from data breaches, federal fines, and patient attrition. Implementing these measures may be costly and time-consuming, but they are required in order to protect your hard-fought reputation against the rising threats of HIPAA fines and data breaches.
Secure messaging apps are the best solution to the insecure and complicated issues of email. Unlike email, an effective secure messaging platform will give your practice the ability to send and receive patient data right out of the box, all without having to spend hours configuring security frameworks and working with costly security consultants.
Secure messaging platforms:
Klara is a HIPAA compliant secure messaging app that gives you the tools you need to effectively communicate with patients, all while transforming the way you do business. Rather than relying on outdated email or cumbersome patient portals, Klara gives you the ability to text your patients and for them to text you back.
Secure messaging apps like Klara can be used to complete patient intake, gather insurance information, and save your staff hours per day. Klara integrates with your practice’s phone system and website, unifying your patient communications to cut down on email follow-up and phone tag.
Klara centralizes the different channels patients use to reach out, so it's easy for practices to quickly respond to patients. Klara also simplifies how teams coordinate with (and about) patients, with workflow features that streamline the patient intake process and help teams efficiently triage incoming messages. Rather than scattered email mailboxes to manage and check, Klara gives each staff member a dedicated inbox, all managed and monitored by a practice administrator.
To find out more about how Klara can streamline your patient engagement, click here to schedule a time with one of our practice advisors.