Secure Text Messaging is Univerally Needed in Healthcare

I’ve written regularly about the need for secure text messaging in healthcare. I can’t believe that it was two years ago that I wrote that Texting is Not HIPAA Secure. Traditional SMS texting on your cell phone is not HIPAA secure, but there are a whole lot of alternatives. In fact, in January I made the case for why even without HIPAA Secure Text Messaging was a much better alternative to SMS.

Those that know me (or read my byline at the end of each article) know that I’m totally bias on this front since I’m an adviser to secure text message company, docBeat. With that disclaimer, I encourage all of you to take a frank and objective look at the potential for HIPAA violations and the potential benefits of secure text over SMS and decide for yourself if there is value in these secure messaging services. This amazing potential is why I chose to support docBeat in the first place.

While I’ve found the secure messaging space really interesting, what I didn’t realize when I started helping docBeat was how many parts of the healthcare system could benefit from something as simple as a secure text message. When we first started talking about the secure text, we were completely focused on providers texting in ambulatory practices and hospitals. We quickly realized the value of secure texting with other members of the clinic or hospital organization like nurses, front desk staff, HIM, etc.

What’s been interesting in the evolution of docBeat was how many other parts of the healthcare system could benefit from a simple secure text message solution. Some of these areas include things like: long term care facilities, skilled nursing facilities, Quick Care, EDs, Radiology, Labs, rehabilitation centers, surgery centers, and more. This shouldn’t have been a surprise since the need to communicate healthcare information that includes PHI is universal and a simple text message is often the best way to do it.

The natural next extension for secure messaging is to connect it to patients. The beautiful part of secure text messaging apps like docBeat is that patients aren’t intimidated by a the messages they receive from docBeat. The same can’t be said for most patient portals which require all sorts of registration, logins, forms, etc. Every patient I know is happy to read a secure text message. I don’t know many that want to login to a portal.

Over the past couple years the secure text messaging tide has absolutely shifted and there’s now a land grab for organizations looking to implement some form of secure text messaging. In some ways it reminds me of the way organizations were adopting EHR software a few years back. However, we won’t need $36 billion to incentivize the adoption of secure text message. Instead, market pressures will make it happen naturally. Plus, with ICD-10 delayed another year, hopefully organizations will have time to focus on small but valuable projects like secure text messaging.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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