Posted by Karen Grace Larsen
It’s a typical hectic day at your clinic. The phones are ringing off the hook, patients are checking in, and your team is juggling multiple tasks. Amidst this flurry of activity, you notice a recurring challenge—communication.
Whether it's scheduling an appointment, addressing patient concerns, or coordinating between staff members, traditional messaging systems are showing their age. They’re slow, often insecure, and can lead to costly mistakes.
What if there was a better way? What if you could get a solution that improves communication, enhances patient engagement, and boosts your practice’s efficiency?
Enter IMS Chat, a HIPAA-compliant, bidirectional messaging platform seamlessly integrated into your IMS electronic health record (EHR) system.
Why Is HIPAA Compliance Important in Healthcare Messaging?
With the healthcare sector becoming increasingly digital and fast-paced, effective communication is crucial. Traditional messaging systems are finding it harder to keep up. They often fall short, especially when it comes to security and efficiency.
Standard emails, short message service (SMS), and even instant messaging applications lack the safeguards to protect sensitive patient information. This is a grave warning for an industry as highly targeted by cybercriminals as healthcare.
The 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report emphasized the importance of HIPAA compliance in healthcare technology. According to the report, the healthcare sector had the third-highest number of data breaches in the past year. A whopping 70% of these breaches involved internal actors (i.e., employees), and nearly half were due to miscellaneous errors.
This highlights a critical vulnerability within healthcare organizations: the risk posed by human oversight and inadequate communication systems.
It also underscores the fact that a HIPAA-compliant messaging system isn’t just a regulatory necessity—it plays a crucial part in protecting patient information.
A secure messaging platform like IMS Chat minimizes the risk of breaches by ensuring sensitive patient information is always transmitted through a safe, encrypted channel.
Instant Messaging Made Secure: IMS Chat’s Key Features
To address these security and communication challenges head-on, Meditab built IMS Chat. Unlike most available messaging programs, IMS Chat offers real-time messaging within a HIPAA-secure system.
Designed with compliant and coordinated care in mind, our instant messaging system empowers your team to have real-time and bidirectional communication with fellow clinic staff, patients, pharmacies, and other entities. Here are IMS Chat’s key features:
Communication
- Exchange messages with patients, clinic staff, and other entities.
- Send automated appointment reminders to patients.
- Create and manage text groups.
- Assign text messages to specific staff members.
- Filter and run searches through text messages.
HIPAA Compliance
- Track practice-related SMS correspondences through detailed audit trails.
- Pull up and review text message assignment history.
- Send patient information, files, and images through an encrypted channel.
- Use reference tags to quickly search drug and ICD information within your IMS database and share them with a click.
- Restrict administrative rights through role-based access control.
Workflow Optimization
- Sign in using your Meditab ID or IMS credentials and use it even if you’re not logged on to IMS.
- Request a patient’s consent to share protected health information (PHI) with a click of a button.
- Allow patients to give their PHI consent through a simple text reply.
- Send instant responses and pre-made reminders by creating personalized templates using the Letter Template module on your IMS EHR software.
The Benefits of IMS’s Instant Messaging System
Seamlessly integrated with your IMS EHR software, IMS Chat offers the following advantages that enhance patient care and practice operations, all while maintaining HIPAA compliance.
Enhance Patient Satisfaction
IMS Chat enables smooth communication between patients and healthcare providers. Patients can easily ask questions, request prescription refills, or follow up on treatment plans, improving patient experience and promoting better health outcomes.
Streamline Practice Processes
With IMS Chat integrated with your practice's EHR and management software, your clinic staff can instantly and securely communicate with each other. This reduces time spent on manual data handoffs via phone calls, emails, and in-person meetings, resulting in faster decision-making and more efficient workflows.
Improve Care Coordination
Experience real-time collaboration with other healthcare providers—even if you’re not from the same office or practice.
This is particularly beneficial for multidisciplinary care teams who need to coordinate patient treatment plans. IMS Chat allows your clinic staff to quickly and securely coordinate with insurance companies, pharmacies, and other entities, giving them faster access to critical information.
Reduce Errors and Miscommunications
Because IMS Chat is integrated with your IMS electronic health records (EHR) database, it allows you to leverage IMS’s reference tagging tool to easily retrieve and share the following data:
- Patient Names
- ICD Codes
- Medications
- Insurances
- Pharmacies
This feature allows you to send accurate information, reducing the risk of miscommunication and misdelivery errors that can occur with verbal messages, handwritten notes, and other less secure messaging platforms.
IMS Chat: Upgrade to Secure Communication & Coordinated Care
In an industry where efficient, secure communication is paramount, IMS Chat offers a robust solution for healthcare providers looking to enhance patient engagement and streamline operations.
Fully equipped with HIPAA-compliant features and seamless IMS integration, there’s no denying it’s a valuable tool for any practice.
Ready to transform your practice's communication? IMS Chat offers a smarter, safer way to meet your practice’s communication needs. Discover how you can elevate patient engagement, enhance your practice’s workflow, and ensure HIPAA compliance—all with one intuitive, integrated messaging platform.
