The exchange of health information through email is an integral part of healthcare communication. It enables healthcare professionals to collaborate, share patient records, and engage patients.
What are HIPAA compliant email solutions?
HIPAA compliant email solutions, like Paubox, enable healthcare providers to communicate securely with their patients, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of protected health information (PHI).
- Secure communication channel: HIPAA compliant email platforms use robust security measures, such as encryption and authentication, to protect sensitive patient information during transmission. This ensures that only authorized individuals can access the information, minimizing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized disclosures.
- Privacy and Confidentiality: With HIPAA compliant email, patients can keep their conversations with healthcare providers private and secure, encouraging them to freely communicate their health concerns or ask questions.
- Convenient health information access: HIPAA compliant email ensures patients can conveniently access their health information, including lab test results, medication prescriptions, and treatment plans, in their highly-searchable inbox.
See also: The transformative power of email for your patients
HIPAA compliant email empowers patients
- Secure transmission: HIPAA compliant email solutions use advanced encryption techniques to safeguard the content of messages. Unauthorized individuals cannot access patients' health information during transmission (and at rest).
- Access controls: Access controls ensure that only authorized personnel with the necessary permissions can view and handle sensitive patient data.
- Authentication and verification: Authentication and verification mechanisms play a role in verifying the identity of the sender and receiver. This feature helps healthcare professionals confirm that they are communicating with legitimate entities, reducing the risk of falling victim to phishing attacks.
- Consent management: HIPAA compliant email solutions often include consent management features like HIPAA compliant forms. This empowers patients to decide who can access their health information and for what purposes.
- Audit trails: Audit trails are essential for transparency and accountability. HIPAA requires detailed logs of who accessed patients' health information and when.
Go deeper: Does the HIPAA Privacy Rule permit healthcare providers to use email to discuss health issues and treatment with their patients?
How to send HIPAA compliant email
- Secure patient information in transit and at rest: Use secure email solutions that encrypt messages and attachments in transit and at rest. Paubox encrypts every email by default, removing the risk of human error.
- Enter into a Business associate agreement: Secure email services are not HIPAA compliant without signing a business associate agreement.
- Set up policies and procedures: Policies related to PHI access, storage, and disclosure should be in place to limit access to authorized individuals only.
- Train staff on secure email best practices: Besides having policies around HIPAA compliant email, healthcare organizations should train employees on these policies and procedures.
Go deeper: How to send HIPAA compliant emails
Tshedimoso Makhene
