The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) conducts occasional audits of covered entities and their business associates, to ensure they comply with HIPAA regulations. Covered entities include health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and healthcare providers.

Imagine you’re a doctor just finishing up with a patient who is suffering from life-threatening injuries. It’s critical that you move quickly, but you’re waiting for crucial lab results and aren’t sure if lab technicians are receiving your pages.

In healthcare, your business is subject to the privacy standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The goal of HIPAA is to protect personal health information (PHI) that are held by doctors, insurance companies, and pharmacies.

Patients often have a whole team of medical professionals treating them. The Institute of Medicine found that each year the average elderly patient sees 7 physicians (5 specialists and 2 primary care physicians) across 4 different practices.

Technology and worldwide accessibility to the internet has made sharing information incredibly easy and efficient. By 2020 an expected 2.95 billion people will be using social networks. Our society today loves to communicate information via text, photo, audio, and video content.

Anybody who has spent any time in a public space, be it a coffee shop, a mall, or a restaurant, can attest to the fact that text messaging has become ubiquitous.