Home doctor visits and patient information confidentiality

So I don't really know where to post this, but I figure here is a good place.

I work in IT, from my home, and I have a doctor who is willing to make house calls. the last time I was sick he came out and looked at a skin rash. Then he sent a text with attached image to another doctor using his phone.

I asked him how he keeps it secure, and he looked at me like I was weird or something. I told him that if the message was not incoded, or if he lost his phone, all that patient info was not secure. I am dealing with this issue because a lot of IT workers now text all the time, and phones information is easy to steal.

I looked it up, and HIPAA actually addresses this, and basically if you are a doctor, and transmit patient information by text, then you are probably in violation of HIPAA and open to a lawsuit.

http://www.hipaa.com/2009/09/hipaa-protected-health-information-what-does-phi...


I did find a good solution with Tigertext ( http://www.tigertext.com
), which I recommended to my doctor, who is now working with his hospital admin to impliment it.

Basically Tigertext deletes the text messages after a set period of time. If the doctor looses his phone, then mesaages will automatically delete, and therefore the PHI is protected and HIPAA requirements have been met.

Question: Am I the only one concerned about this?

Anyone know anyother solutions besides Tigertext for meeting the HIPAA requirements?

Another source of info:

http://www.hipaatext.com
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