Texting Among Academic Psychiatrists: What Does HIPAA Allow?
The texting of protected health information (PHI) has raised concerns about breach of privacy as it relates to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Within psychiatry, limited guidelines exist on HIPAA-permissible texting. Given the legal implications of a breach, we sought to better understand texting patterns among psychiatrists by surveying members of the Association for Academic Psychiatry, 53 of whom responded. Only 63% of respondents felt confident in their knowledge of HIPAA. While 64% reported that texting PHI is prohibited, most (53%) still used texting to communicate PHI. Currently, HIPAA is technology neutral and texting PHI is not explicitly prohibited, provided safeguards are taken and physicians securely communicate PHI.
HIPAA Compliance with Mobile Devices Among ACGME Programs
To analyze self-reported HIPAA compliance with mobile technologies among residents, fellows, and attendings at ACGME training programs. A digital survey was sent to 678 academic institutions over a 1-month period. 2427 responses were analyzed using Chi-squared tests for independence. Post-hoc Bonferroni correction was applied for all comparisons between training levels, clinical setting, and specialty. 58 % of all residents self-report violating HIPAA by sharing protected health information (PHI) via text messaging with 27 % reporting they do it “often” or “routinely” compared to 15-19 % of attendings. For all specialties, 35 % of residents use text messaging photo or video sharing with PHI. Overall, 5 % of respondents “often” or “routinely” used HIPAA compliant (HCApps) with no significant differences related to training level. 20 % of residents admitted to using non-encrypted email at some point. 53 % of attendings and 41 % of residents utilized encrypted email routinely. Physicians from surgical specialties compared to non-surgical specialties demonstrated higher rates of HIPAA violations with SMS use (35 % vs. 17.7 %), standard photo/video messages (16.3 % vs. 4.7 %), HCApps (10.9 % vs. 4.9 %), and non-HCApps (5.6 % vs 1.5 %). The most significant barriers to complying with HIPAA were inconvenience (58 %), lack of knowledge (37 %), unfamiliarity (34 %), inaccessible (29 %) and habit (24 %). Medical professionals must acknowledge that despite laws to protect patient confidentiality in the era of mobile technology, over 50 % of current medical trainees knowingly violate these rules regularly despite the threat of severe consequences. The medical community must further examine the reason for these inconsistencies and work towards possible solutions.
Ethics and the professions.
We may not be able to make you love reading, but ethics and the professions will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.