Home doctor visits and patient information confidentiality by p4meds2me ..... Home Remedies Forum
Date: 2/17/2012 12:05:43 PM ( 12 y ago)
Hits: 1,803
URL: https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=1910283
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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