Every day, more people chat to talk to friends, family members, and acquaintances. Besides convenience, instant messaging and chat services also provide an additional layer of security. Thus, this additional layer of security makes using those services attractive for doctors, healthcare facilities, clearinghouses, and other organizations who need to communicate sensitive data with their patients and clients.

But no matter how compliant a messaging app or chat service to the guidelines in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is, most of them still have the risk of experiencing data breaches. That’s why there are still essential steps you might want to take to make those messages as secure as possible.

This article looks at those steps and other precautions you should consider and take whenever using HIPAA compliant messaging and chat services.

What Is HIPAA?

HIPAA is a US law that imposes requirements on organizations to take measures in safeguarding the medical information of their clients. Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, all patient medical records, primarily Electronic Protected Health Information (EPHI), are protected under federal law. EPHI is identifiable health information transmitted or maintained electronically.

HIPAA compliance is mandatory if a covered entity organization intends to communicate with their clients that may involve EPHI through chat, email, and any digital form of communication. The term ‘covered entities’ refers to health care clearinghouses, health plans, and healthcare providers that transmit any patient information electronically.

To prevent getting your organization in trouble because of HIPAA complaints or incidents, you may want to follow these ten practices below.

1. Check Whether The App Or Service Meets HIPAA Compliance Standards

The first thing to do is check whether the messaging or chat app you’re using is HIPAA compliant. Remember that even if the developer or service provider says that their software or service is encrypted but don’t mention that it’s HIPAA compliant, don’t use it. Only use apps and services specifically designated as ‘HIPAA-compliant’ that are deemed to meet healthcare organizations’ necessary level of data security.

2. Get Confirmation Of Security Measures By The Developer

It’s also advisable that you confirm the security measures taken by the developer or provider. You can do this by checking their website or contacting them directly with questions regarding how they keep your data secure.

If it’s unclear if your messages are not stored securely, the app or service might not be HIPAA compliant. Stop using it as you might be risking a HIPAA violation if you continue to use it.

3. Limit Employee Access

HIPAA compliance begins with limiting employees’ access to client-related information. This means that they can only access the information they need to perform their job. Because of that, healthcare facilities and all other covered entities should get a messaging or chat solution that can limit and restrict access to select users.

4. Track Message History

To retain HIPAA compliance, you need to record all messages sent and received each day by your healthcare organization. Recorded messages should include the sender’s name, job title, message type (text or photo), sent timestamp, and any contact details. These messages can then be stored and maintained as a record should legal action be required in the future.

5. Encrypt Messages

By default, HIPAA compliant apps should run on an encrypted connection. To further protect your organization’s HIPAA compliance, encryption makes messaging apps and chat services secure. It can ensure third parties can’t access or tap on patient data without the necessary permission.

6. Block Email Forwarding

When it comes to HIPAA compliance, ensure that you prevent employees with access to sensitive information to forward emails outside your organization’s email system. Only a select few should have the privilege to forward or send emails outside your company’s email system.

7. Business Associate Agreement

Your business partners might need to access EPHI through text messages and chat services for some medical facilities. To give them access without compromising your organization, you can outline a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). A BAA is a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) used by HIPAA compliant organizations.

The BAA establishes that any third parties, such as messaging apps and chat services, should only access patient data for exclusively business-related reasons and should only disclose EPHI when it’s necessary to carry out specific tasks.

8. Audit Trail

To ensure that you maintain HIPAA compliance, organizations should ensure that audit trails are in place. Auditing activity of users means that all messages and chat services should be monitored, with a record of the users who have sent or received sensitive information. Tracking chat logs greatly reduces the risk of HIPAA violations, as it makes it easier to identify any unauthorized access attempts.

9. Disable Chat Transcript Option

Since most web chat is inbound only, you should disable the option for a chat user to request or send a transcript of their conversation. Enabling this option may pose risks to your organization, as it means that patient data could be exposed to a third party.

Additionally, employees must only share EPHI that they’re authorized to use, so make sure that chat transcript options are disabled on all messaging and chat tools. Disabling the chat transcript option prevents sensitive information from being shared outside of your organization’s secure messaging system.

10. Verify Identity Of Chat Users

When it comes to HIPAA compliance, you should only allow access to your chat system by employees who have been verified using various verification systems. Doing so reduces the risk of unauthorized access attempts, as employees must undergo a rigorous authentication process before being granted access to your chat system.

Conclusion

Having a HIPAA-compliant chat system in place can help your organization to share patient data securely. However, having a HIPAA-compliant messaging or chat system alone doesn’t make your organization compliant. These tools can only support organizations in maintaining HIPAA compliance. As such, you must understand what HIPAA-compliant messaging and chat services can do for your organization and how they support your current compliance efforts.

The most important thing you can do is establish a secure messaging policy for your organization. This policy should cover all aspects of your secure messaging system, including technical security features and user authentication. Only with a clear understanding of how to use the technology in a compliant manner will you maintain HIPAA compliance.

If you’re having trouble being productive during the day, it’s possible that you’re using technology wrong. In fact, you’re probably letting technology distract you from your work rather than utilizing it as a force for greater efficiency and output.

4 Tech Tips for Boosting Productivity

While technology is often the culprit for distractions and lack of productivity, it can also serve as a catalyst for getting more work done. It’s simply a matter of how you approach it. 

Don’t believe it? Well, look no further than leading businesses and their increased emphasis on the strategic use of technology. More than 70 percent of companies say business productivity tools help them run their businesses more efficiently. In comparison, 81 percent agree that workforce productivity is their number one IT priority over the next year. Some 56 percent of CEOs say the progress they achieve at the hands of digital technology enables them to grow their profits.

If technology is good enough to boost the overall productivity of entire organizations, then you can bet it’s good enough to boost your own productivity. Here are several tips to help you get the most out of it.

1. Use Task Management Apps

A major part of being productive is being organized. And if you want to be organized, it helps to centralize all of your tasks, assignments, and obligations in one place with deadlines, reminders, and to-do lists. Having the right task management is very helpful in this regard.

There are plenty of task management apps on the market (many free). This includes Microsoft To-Do, Things, Google Tasks, Todoist, Evernote, and others. 

However, one of the best options is a simple solution called Remember The Milk. This app is sleek, simple, and allows you to organize tasks based on priority, due dates, and tags. You can even set up repeating tasks, sync with your calendar, and share with friends and family.

When using a task management app, it’s important to add everything to it. This includes both work tasks, personal tasks, errands, etc. By putting everything on the list, it frees up your mental capacity to actually do the work. 

2. Automate What You Can

If there’s a manual task that you can automate, you should automate it. While it may take several minutes to find the right automation tool and learn how to use it, the long-term time-savings justify the upfront investment.

As a bonus, once you get your automations set up, you can use tools like Zapier and IFTTT to connect automations for even more productivity. For example, you can set up Gmail to automatically create a task inside of Remember the Milk every time you star an email from one of your superiors at work. 

Or you could tell Google Calendar or Zoom to automatically send you a text message whenever someone cancels a meeting. You can combine almost any application with another tool. There are literally thousands of integrations.

3. Try Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Are you familiar with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)? It’s a simple and safe method by which you activate your body’s vagus nerve (which is like your body’s “chill out machine”) and self-soothe during stressful moments. Also known as neuromodulation, the VNS process sends signals to the brain to relax and focus. Best of all, you can do it quickly and safely from anywhere (including at home or in the office).

The easiest way to facilitate VNS is through the use of a system like Xen by Neuvana (which is basically a pair of specialized headphones that stimulate the vagus nerve through targeted frequency bands).

4. Use Distraction Blockers

No matter how hard you may try to stay on task, it’s almost impossible to stay 100 percent focused when you have the entire internet available at your disposal. 

Even the most disciplined mind is prone to scrolling through social media, binge-watching YouTube clips, or visiting your favorite news website. And if you want to avoid falling victim to these time-sucks, you may need to download a distraction blocking tool or focus app.

Focus apps are tools that block specific websites and/or allow you to set a schedule or timer to limit how much time you spend on distracting sites or applications. Here’s a list of good options. We recommend finding one and using it to limit the amount of time you spend on certain websites.

Give Your Productivity a Boost

Productivity doesn’t have to be as elusive as it seems. By leveraging the right technology in the right ways, you can get more done in less time without the distracting elements that typically come with apps, devices, and other solutions. 

Use this article as a launching pad for doing bigger and better things!