Thursday, August 25, 2011

Make HIPAA Secure Email Part of Your Office

Think about how many emails you send  from your medical practice each day: not only the intra-office emails that go to other doctors, nurses and office staff, but emails that extend outside to patients, hospitals, insurance companies and distributors.  That's a lot of activity going on in the in and outbox.  In a recent blog post, Medical Web Experts explained the importance of HIPAA secure email and how to avoid breaking security regulations.

With the rise in occurrences of system hacking, the content of office email is just as susceptible of being stolen as the content in the medical records.  HIPAA regulations affect email as well as paper records because they can contain sensitive information.  The blog post recommends that to further ensure the prevention of information leaks, to refrain from discussing anything medical-related over email, the patient portal and Contact Us forms.

Having a HIPAA secure email system will also prevent your practice from receiving violations and fines, which are a serious deal and can be steep.  Medical Web Experts advises practices to have an at least a 128-bit encryption on your email applications that archives all inbound and outbound emails.  An example of an encrypted system is the webmail application Zimbra.

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