Text messaging is a rapidly growing trend in Healthcare.[when?] "One survey found that 73% of physicians text other physicians about work- similar to the overall percentage of the population that texts."[citation needed] A 2006 study of reminder messages sent to children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus showed favorable changes in adherence to treatment.[129]
A risk is that these physicians could be violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Where messages could be saved to a phone indefinitely, patient information could be subject to theft or loss, and could be seen by other unauthorized persons. The HIPAA privacy rule requires that any text message involving a medical decision must be available for the patient to access, meaning that any texts that are not documented in an EMR system could be a HIPAA violation.
Patrick Abboud
No comments:
Post a Comment