Communication plays a major role in our everyday life. The same in health care is much more significant. In early days, communication in health care was not as faster as we need. Only after the invention of text messaging techniques , our communication became faster. Communication in health care must not only be faster but should also be secured from all threats. To secure such electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI), the HIPAA Compliant was passed.
HIPAA Compliant (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) :
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act signed by the President Bill Clinton in August 1996 with five sections/titles which states the set of guidelines regarding Health Insurance including data privacy and security provisions.
Among the five titles, the Title II named as Administrative Simplification Provisions (AS) focuses on establishing the national standards for preventing the patients’ health information from inappropriate or unauthorized access and concealing the confidential messages with appropriate security and privacy policies.
Advantages of HIPAA Messaging Compliance solutions :
- Easy to understand and use
- Messages Delivery and read confirmations
- Messages Recall
- Message and device security
- Preserved chat logs and directories
HIPAA and Output Messenger:
Because of security weakness in existing SMS (Short Message Service), the HIPAA was implemented with following considerations which will be fulfilled by the messaging system to be used in healthcare organizations.
They are:
- Encryption
- Recipient Authentication
- Audit Controls
- Secure Data Centers
Encryption:
Administrative Simplification states that ePHI (electronic Protected Health Information) must be encrypted both in transit and at rest.
The transmitting messages must be protected from prying eyes. The most common and secured way to secure our messages during transit is Secure Socket Layer (SSL), a standard security standards widely used encryption in e-commerce.
And the resting messages in vendor’s system should be protected from alterations. Advanced Encryption Standards (256-bit version of AES) will provide you a highest level of encryption, an only recognized standard for securing Top secret information.
Our Output Messenger has SSL/TLS AES 256 Bit encryption on all the communication data.
Authentication:
Any messages with ePHI, must be delivered to the authenticated recipient. The solution must allow the sender to have knowledge about the delivery of message to the intended person along with the status of messages.
Also the texting solution should send and receive messages based on the names used in the organization directory not based on their phone number. This will prohibit the nature of looking for the phone numbers also restricts the wrong delivery of messages.
Output Messenger allows only the authenticated users to be connected and transfer the messages among them. No outsiders or guests can interfere into your conversation, other than your registered users of your directory.
Audit Controls:
The Messaging system should allow you to have records on all the messages which can be referred for future uses. It should have flexibility to archive messages and information, quickly retrieve and monitor them.
Yes, our Output Messenger’s Centralized Chat Log lets you to catch all your chat logs and retrieve them when you need.
You can view the chat log in ‘Output Messenger Server Manager > Log Menu > Chat History’.
Secure Data Centers:
HIPAA states that all ePHI’s should be stored in either onsite or offsite (cloud) data centers with high level of physical security with risk assessments. A qualified testing solution should provide secure platform for messaging.
Since our Output Messenger server is hosted in your environment, you have to make sure all the security standards are followed, whereas we or Output Messenger software cannot control it.