Since 2013, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has required provider-to-provider digital communications regarding patients to be sent through encrypted communication. Initially, true adoption of this part of the HIPAA regulation was slow to catch on.
However, with the increase in public awareness of the need for additional cyber-security measures to protect personal information, adoption of encrypted email has grown dramatically in the last 18-24 months. For those offices that are yet to implement encrypted email, here are three benefits that the best encrypted email solutions provide:
1) While all true encrypted email solutions will encrypt your data while in transit and at rest, the best encrypted email solutions will allow you to control and track your encrypted email message. For example, SecureMail from the Digital Dental Record will notify you when someone reviews a message you sent them. You can also stop someone from forwarding or replying to your message.
2) The second thing the best encrypted email solutions will allow you to do is to send securely using your existing email address. You should be able to integrate encryption into your existing email workflow, and the patients and providers you work with should receive messages from your same email address they’re used to seeing.
3) You should be able to send as many X-rays as you would like without limitation. One of the greatest benefits of encrypted email is that the best solutions won’t limit your ability to send large image files (such as DICOM or STL) or a large number of files (such as FMX). With regular email, you are typically limited to sending somewhere between 5MB and 15MB per email.
When you consider secure email’s low cost and easy implementation, combined with the benefits above, it’s a great gift to give your practice this holiday season.
