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 situations like these, it’s vital to have quick and reliable communication between staff to prevent harm or death among patients. The solution is simple: utilize a secure and encrypted messaging app for quick communication between health care teams that allows for accountability and ensures compliance. 

Secure Messaging in the Healthcare Industry

Traditional pagers have been around since the 1940s and have been used by health care providers worldwide. It may be surprising to know these devices are susceptible to hackers and can be intercepted by someone armed with the right software. Organizations using these devices put themselves at risk of a potential lawsuit if sensitive patient information is ever breached. 

The growth of technology has allowed for improvements in the healthcare industry, helping to replace the traditional pager. Secure messaging apps, like miSecureMessages, now play a key role in the healthcare industry. These apps allow for quick and secure communication across health care teams with the ability to send photo, video, and audio attachments, view urgent messages and send customizable quick phrases, all while remaining HIPAA compliant. 

End-to-end encryption, as we discussed in our previous blog, helps protect data by only allowing the sender and the recipient(s) to view messages on a device, and does not allow for the message to be stored by the network provider. We also covered several security features of miSecureMessages, including remote disabling of the app if the device is lost or stolen, and the fact that messages are not stored on the device. 

Secure messaging apps offer more than just a simple, streamlined, and secure way to communicate among health care teams. These apps also allow for accountability and protection against potential lawsuits. 

Accountability Across Your Team 

Imagine you’re back in the doctor’s shoes in the scenario above, but now you have the ability to see if the lab technician has received and opened your message requesting the lab results. Lab technicians using the app can also verify that the lab results were sent and you’ve received them. A level of accountability, transparency, and protection has now been established that enhances timely communication.

The reporting function on the miSecureMessages secure messaging app shows when a message was sent and if it was opened by the recipient. This feature increases accountability across healthcare teams while also instilling confidence that messages have been successfully sent.

Protect Against Lawsuits 

Advanced reporting features are invaluable in legal situations. Secure messaging apps like miSecureMessages can protect health care teams from negligence by remaining HIPAA compliant through end-to-end encryption and keeping health care teams accountable for their actions with timestamps. 

Quick, secure, and complaint messaging in the healthcare industry is vital, not only to the success of the organization but to the health and welfare of its patients. If you’re thinking about switching to a secure communication solution for your team or would like to learn more about the miSecureMessages app, reach out to our team.