White Papers for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Secure Communication Solutions for Healthcare: A CertifiedMail Industry Overview

ReSoft International

With e-mail now found in the majority of businesses as well as most homes, the Internet has become the most popular method of communication, surpassing both regular mail and the telephone.Increasingly, e-mail is taking the place of phone calls to communicate between doctors and patients. The latest results of the Internet Survey of Medicine revealed that 85 percent of physicians surveyed are currently using the Internet, more than 63 percent of the physicians surveyed use e-mail daily, and 33 percent have used email
to communicate with patients. E-mail is also popular with healthcare workers to send patient data and
attachments to colleagues and medical facilities for collaboration and review. E-mail empowers the healthcare industry in new ways and brings new expectations as well.Significant productivity gains and cost savings will further entrench e-mail into the healthcare industry. But before e-mail can be used as a universal communication tool for sensitive data, several significant drawbacks must be addressed. E-mail was designed for easy, rapid flow of information, without considering accountability and security of information. These are important attributes to the healthcare industry, especially when sending patient-related information. In the same way that patient medical records would never be sent on the back of a postcard, e-mailing that data exposes this information as plain text to the Internet. Fortunately, the limitations of e-mail are already known to many in the healthcare industry. The American Health Information Management Association, in their E-mail Draft Policy, indicates that “E-mail communication systems are not secure; mail sent via the Internet or other external systems can be intercepted and read by individuals other than the intended recipient.” Federal legislators are also aware of these limitations, and have passed new regulations ensuring the privacy of patient data.

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