Reducing Risks when Texting in Your Medical Practice

Texting enables physicians to quickly communicate important health information to patients. However, texting protected health information (PHI) can lead to significant healthcare privacy law (HIPAA and HITECH) concerns.

5 Tips to Help Lower Medical Texting Risk

In this special report, NORCAL’s risk management experts offer an informative guide that combines both external research and NORCAL’s proprietary risk management data highlighting five helpful tips to stay compliant and reduce the risk of inadvertently exposing patients’ private information when texting.

Risk Areas

• Learn 5 tips to help lower risk when using texting to communicate professionally.

Case Study

• Learn how other medical professionals have put themselves and their practices at risk.

Best Practices

• Guard yourself against common mistakes and feel more comfortable integrating texting in your practice.
  
  

References

1. Gregg, Helen. “10 Statistics on Physicians’ At-Work Texting Habits.” Becker’s Hospital Review. May 13, 2014. (accessed 6/20/17)

2. Ventola, C. Lee. “Mobile Devices and Apps for Health Care Professionals: Uses and Benefits.” Pharmacy and Therapeutics. May 2014; 39(5): 356–364. (accessed 6/20/17)

3. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights. “Breaches Affecting 500 or More Individuals.” (accessed 6/20/17) [NOTE: data on the site are updated regularly and so may vary from those cited in this report]

4. Greene, Adam H. “HIPAA Compliance for Clinician Texting.” The American Health Information Management Association. Journal of AHIMA 83, no.4 (April 2012): 34-36. (accessed 6/20/17)

5. Harris, Steven M. “Physician Texting Could Violate HIPAA.” The Rheumatologist. August 2012. (accessed 6/20/17)