Herewith a look at legal dangers for healthcare professionals and institutions to avoid when e-mailing or texting vendors and patients.
This detailed and very useful Medscape entry by lawyer Michael J. Sacopulos suggests:
“The best approach is to keep all electronic communications with or concerning a patient in the electronic medical record (EMR) system. This is done through patient portals. EMR systems generally supply a secure platform for housing and communicating PHI.
“In situations where the use of an EMR patient portal is not possible, use encrypted email or secured text messaging. This will keep PHI (protected health information} safe in transit. For those times when encrypted email or secure text messages are being sent, make sure that they ultimately get into the patient’s chart.”
