Kick the pager: More key stats for HIPPA-secure messaging

As Secure Messaging  continues to emerge as a fixture of the healthcare industry, it’s crucial for those in the field to understand the fundamentals of the issue; both the communication difficulties that inspire the development of solutions, like HipaaChat, and the mobility, compliance, security and privacy benefits of the technology. Let’s take another look at our recent survey brief,  9 HIPAA-Secure Messaging Trends for Healthcare in 2015, to identify some of the most revealing findings for all healthcare professionals:

Pagers Often Lead to Ineffective and Inefficient Communication: More than 48% of respondents claim that having to use pagers to reach coworkers is most likely to create inefficient communication with peers. For the 71% of healthcare employees who do not have access to HIPAA-compliant secure messaging, pagers are one of the main modules of communication. And, as anyone who has used a pager knows, they’re not always the fastest way to communicate. This will create problems for healthcare professionals, as speed can have a critical impact on the treatment and lives of patients.

Not Being Able to Use Text Via Smartphones Creates Communication Issues: Over 25% believe not being able to text via smartphones hinders communication with peers. Now, of course, pagers are not the only technology currently widely available to healthcare employees. There are options like email and telephone. However, more than 24% of those working in healthcare believe that these solutions still don’t provide an effective means of communication in all situations. To have to wait for someone to check their email, or return your call, can be frustrating in an urgent situation, let alone even the most mundane of circumstances. When this wait-and-see approach is transferred in to a hospital setting, it can be downright dangerous. With secure mobile communications solutions, healthcare employees have the ability to read, respond and confirm receipt of messages and updates with increased speed, particularly during an emergency.

HIPAA-Secure Messaging is a Top 3 Method for Communicating Patient Information: Speaking of which, over 45% of respondents ranked HIPAA-secure text messaging as one of the top three most effective and efficient tools for communicating patient information with peers. In addition, 65.5% believed it was the most effective for time sensitive, emergency communication and collaboration about patient care. This result certainly indicates that HIPAA-compliant texting works well for potentially life-saving situations, including STEMI alerts, that require the most attention to detail and timely response.