HIPAA Allows for Regular Email Communication Between Patients and Physicians

There is a widespread mistaken belief that HIPAA prohibits physicians from communicating with patients using regular un-encrypted email as well as with other physicians about patient care.

HIPAA, for those who don't know, is a law that requires patient information to be kept private with safeguards. Email (such as yahoo, gmail, aol, etc) is not considered a secure form of communication.

However, HIPAA does allow for such un-secured email communication under certain circumstances. I quote from the horse's mouth:

"Patients may initiate communications with a provider using e-mail. If this situation occurs, the health care provider can assume (unless the patient has explicitly stated otherwise) that e-mail communications are acceptable to the individual. If the provider feels the patient may not be aware of the possible risks of using unencrypted e-mail, or has concerns about potential liability, the provider can alert the patient of those risks, and let the patient decide whether to continue e-mail communications."

As such, it may be worthwhile for a patient to acknowledge the following statements before an email can be sent from a practice website using un-secured email:

"I understand email is not considered secure and as such, is not considered a confidential method of communication."  

"By your sending an email to us, you are giving permission for us to reply by email."

Even if private health information may be included, that's fine if, I quote from the horse's mouth:

"Further, while the Privacy Rule does not prohibit the use of unencrypted e-mail for treatment-related communications between health care providers and patients, other safeguards should be applied to reasonably protect privacy, such as limiting the amount or type of information disclosed through the unencrypted e-mail."

Read more about un-secured email communication as it relates to HIPAA here from the Department of Health & Human Services.

WP: Physicians Use Photos From Patients' Cell Phones to Guide Healthcare

The Washington Post on Aug 31, 2010, published an interesting story where emergency physicians at George Washington Medical Center enabled patients to take a picture of their wound on their cell phone and transmit it to the ER where a physician will take a look and come up with diagnosis and appropriately triage the patient.

In this study, they found that 90% of diagnosis made by this method came out accurate!

What many people may not realize is that some form of "online" consultation including pictures is already being used by physicians including our practice!

At least in our practice, for security purposes, a patient can email us WITH picture attachment using our online email form. This technically can be done via cell phone, but must occur via our website.

Our practice has received over 100 emails in the past 6 months since it was first offered, 25% of which contained picture attachments (typically CT or MRI images).

Read the Washington Post article here.

Check out our email submission form here.

Website Updated Utilizing ReCAPTCHA To Avoid Spam Email

Our website over the past few months has been visited over 4000 times a day. Though such high numbers are great, the downside is that we have started seeing an increasing amount of spam email such that more spam is received than legitimate email.

In order to combat such spam, we have had no choice but to institute a system whereby our email address is hidden until 2 word images are correctly typed in. We have selected ReCAPTCHA to provide this service for two main reasons... it is free and by entering the words in the box, we help to digitize texts that were written before the computer age. Read more about this here.

Of course, we still have a secure email submission form which prevents spam as well as protects confidential private information.