Quality Care is a social work agency based in Kentucky. Its mission is to provide high-quality care by promoting respect, personal growth, and empowerment. The agency supports individuals through a person-centered approach to become active members of the communities in which they live and work.
We recently spoke to Quality Care’s owner and executive director, Terra Durbin, about how she has been managing the communication pipeline for her patients by leveraging Paubox Email Suite Standard. In Kentucky, the government sends out directives regarding COVID-19 to the executive directors of agencies, and they disseminate the information as they see fit.
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Company snapshot
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- Founded in December 2012
- Paubox customer since 2020
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Industry
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Use case
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Keep clients in the loop about constantly changing state policy updates |
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Goals
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- Ease of use for email recipients - no portals or passwords
- Ability to switch to telehealth while remaining HIPAA compliant
- Peace of mind
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Used solution
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Favorite features
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- No portals or passwords for email recipients
- Ease of service
- No PHI sent unencrypted
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Quality Care updates its procedures in the face of coronavirus
Terra and her team provide consultative and monitoring services for patients, such as behavior modification services and occupational therapy. In the face of the COVID-19 outbreak, Quality Care has been transitioning from face-to-face services to a telehealth model.
The agency has been using virtual conferencing or phone calls for meetings. Using Paubox Email Suite Standard, the team has been emailing instructions for different activities, as well as sharing new tools and educational resources for staff members to use with individuals or family members.
That way, “we’re not having to physically be face to face with that individual to still allow for appropriate and effective delivery of services through electronic methods.”
Quality Care relies on Paubox Email Suite Standard to provide HIPAA compliant communication
Quality Care is a brand new Paubox Email Suite Standard customer. In fact, the trial period ended less than a week ago. The timing has been serendipitous, since using Paubox during this difficult period has helped Terra in a critical way.
Terra explained that without Paubox, her team would not have been able to switch to a telehealth model while remaining in HIPAA compliance.
With Paubox, they were “able to switch very easily to telehealth services without any interference in our service delivery, because everything that we’re sending is completely protected,” she said. “And that is one less worry that I have in a constant state of worry at this point.”
“The biggest benefit that Paubox has brought to us is just the ease of service,” Terra explained. “I’ve not had to think about ‘Okay, how am I going to bridge from a face to face patient delivery system to an online telehealth communication system?’ I’ve not had to think about HIPAA compliance. The comfort of not having to worry about that crucial and important step has been great for us.”
In addition, Terra appreciates Paubox’s ease of use for the email recipient. “They don’t have to enter a password. And they don’t have to go through all these five steps. That’s something that I have to do a lot personally when I’m getting emails from other entities . . . It takes time, it takes effort and it’s frustrating.”
“It is such a sense of relief to see that little logo on the bottom, and it’s just encrypted,” Terra said. “I don’t have to think about it any further and that peace of mind has been a wonderful thing for us.”
Results
Since March 2020, Quality Care has sent nearly 45,000 HIPAA compliant emails on behalf of 22 employees. Since Paubox encrypts all emails by default, no one had to spend any time wondering about whether or not to encrypt an email; it was done automatically. And all the email recipients had to do was click "open" to read an email - no password or portal required.
