regulatory and compliance standards for the healthcare industry

Not only will secure texting and secure messaging impact provider-to-provider communication, but also provider-to-patient. 

With the continued push for patient-centered care and ever-evolving technological options available to healthcare providers, secure texting and secure messaging have become an increasingly popular path for providers.

Not only will secure texting and secure messaging impact provider-to-provider communication, but also provider-to-patient.

For example, secure messaging use increased 30 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to a data brief released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Specifically, 52 percent of physicians said they exchanged secure messages in 2014.

Moreover, 42 percent more physicians granted their patients view, download, or transmit access to their electronic health information.

ONC also found that there was just a small increase in the number of physicians electronically sharing patient health information with other providers. Between 2013 and 2014, there was just a 7 percent increase in that area, with less than 1 in 10 physicians sharing patient data with hospitals with which they were not affiliated.

When it comes to BYOD strategies, healthcare providers need to ensure that their employees – the end-users — receive comprehensive training and education so they understand what their responsibilities are, according to Spok CIO Tom Saine.

“Security is not just the responsibility of the security officer or the IT department,” Saine told HealthITSecurity.com. “In all aspects of security, the biggest weakest link in any security policy, procedure, or practice is the human being.”

However, it’s also essential to deploy solutions that are not overly cumbersome for the end users, he added.

“You have to figure out how to do that where it's not an overly burdensome impact to the end users doing his or her job,” Saine explained. “There has to be some things in there that make it a little bit more difficult, but you have to be able to find that happy medium.

Overcoming common secure texting, messaging concerns

Strong communication is central to care coordination, according to Gaudet, and the proper communication tools and channels help providers communicate, collaborate and deliver care across the continuum.

“If you look at the state of the industry as a whole, we just spent a bunch of years and money moving from paper-based care – paper-based documentation, and charts for example – to electronic systems,” he stated. “And multiple billions of dollars went into that transformation for healthcare.”

Gaudet added that now, providers have everything they need electronically about the patient, but they haven’t really approached the way that care is coordinated.

“What we find is that communication is broken in healthcare. And hospitals are using outdated forms of technology and processes like pagers, and call centers with operators to route calls, and faxes to send documents.”

However, that line of communication is clearly becoming more important in terms of working directly with patients.

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