For healthcare organizations, safeguarding electronic-protected health information (ePHI) continues to be a critical part of maintaining HIPAA-compliant communication. Yet as the landscape of communication technologies continues to evolve — with greater use of mobile devices, SMS messages, wearables, email, and video chat — many covered entities are finding compliance hard to master.
According to a survey cited by Health IT Security, 59 percent of clinical informaticists and 39 percent of clinical staff acknowledged the occurrence of unsecure SMS messaging. In addition, 77 percent of IT respondents said secure messaging was a top driver in their communication selections, followed by voice and secure messaging consolidation.
As the survey highlighted, getting employees to follow HIPAA-compliant communication standards, especially for...