HIPAA-compliant texting made simple with Heymarket

Enhance communication with patients while adhering to HIPAA regulations. Easily send administrative texts like reminders, updates, and portal notifications at scale with personalization that improves engagement.

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A note on HIPAA-compliant texting

HIPAA compliance may be fact- and context-specific. The information contained on this page should not be relied upon as legal advice or to determine how these regulations apply to your use of SMS and our service. You may use this page for your internal reference purposes only. This information is provided “as is” and may be updated or changed without notice.

Crucial features of HIPAA-compliant texting apps

Any organization that handles protected health information must remain HIPAA compliant throughout all aspects of their communication, including text messaging. Heymarket helps you build trust with opt-in management tools that ensure you’re texting compliantly. The SMS marketing platform also elevates your bulk text messaging capabilities by achieving better engagement, improving relationships, and growing ROI at scale with personalized texts that resonate with your subscriber list.

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Encryption

Sensitive data protection during storage and transit

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Roles and permissions

Manage who can access sensitive information for confidentiality

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Message logging

Export messages for audit purposes

Heymarket: Intuitive and secure HIPAA compliant texting app

Improve patient satisfaction

Provide a convenient way for patients to get in touch with your practice. Send prompt updates to help keep patients in-the-know about important updates like results using automated SMS notifications. Simplify patient information collection with convenient texts including links to your portal for sensitive data.

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Expedite communications

Quickly field inquiries and handle reschedule requests from any communication channel through powerful shared inboxes. Trigger automations that answer office FAQs based on user actions and incoming keywords. Collect administrative information quickly with text notifications and 2-way conversations that overcome obstacles swiftly.

Reduce no-shows

Use drip campaigns to make sure patients know when their next appointment is. Schedule reminders at intervals leading up to the appointment for fewer no-shows. Offer simple rescheduling via text replies to maintain an up-to-date schedule.

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Automate patient follow-up

Send patients notifications about test results, prescriptions, or visit summaries after an appointment. Automatically send reminders about newly-scheduled appointments to keep patients informed. Create automations that ask for feedback to improve your practice.

Secure your data to build trust

Heymarket is HIPAA and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant to simplify adhering to compliance laws. Protect personal information with message encryption during storage and transmission. Secure your access with role management, permissions, and encryption.

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Patient-friendly HIPAA-compliant text messaging

25% response rate achieved

“You’re more likely to get a response via text.”

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“Heymarket continues the convenience and responsiveness that you don’t get in a lot of businesses.”

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50% appointment book rate through text

“We love Heymarket. It’s great having a separate inbox for customer conversations. It’s easy to keep clear. And bookings have increased!”

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Compliant HIPAA text best practices

Violation of HIPAA rules can result in legal and financial penalties as well as loss of trust with patients, so HIPAA-compliant texting is paramount. All medical texting must be compliant with HIPAA to avoid costly financial and legal repercussions. Here are some tips on how to do HIPAA texting correctly:

Secure opt-in

Business texting of any kind requires you to secure an opt-in from your recipients before texting them. You can capture an opt-in through a range of methods including an online form, physical form, or by having patients text an inbound keywordYou must specify what patients are signing up for upon consent capture to maintain compliance.

Only send administrative details

You have to be careful about what you text to patients. Use texting to send administrative details like appointment information, billing reminders, and updates that a test result or visit summary are available with a link to your secure portal. Do not send sensitive medical information over text.

Make opt-outs easy

Business SMS regulations require that you allow contacts to opt-out of receiving your texts at any time. Use a business texting solution that offers opt-in management tools so that patients can reply with a keyword like “STOP” to automatically be removed from your texting list.

Personalize texts

Healthcare is a sensitive matter that requires a positive patient-practice relationship to thrive. Personalization allows you to add specific information like a patient’s name to improve engagement or appointment information to add value to your reminders. Add custom fields from your patients’ profiles to ensure you’re sending relevant messages.

Automate follow-ups

Automations help save your practice time while improving patient experiences through timely communication. Create automatic appointment reminders a week or days before an appointment, send a notification when a prescription is ready, or alert patients of test results that are available in the portal using notifications.

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HIPAA-compliant texting FAQs

Have other questions about the new way to send a HIPAA-compliant text for business? Explore our answers below, and reach out to our team to learn more.

No, texting is not natively HIPAA-compliant. Texts can be intercepted by hackers and sensitive information can become exposed when stored on a mobile phone. You must only send electronic personal health information (ePHI) through a secure platform and not through SMS. However, HIPAA-compliant medical text messaging platforms can help you send important administrative information and streamline patient communications while adhering to HIPAA regulations.

A HIPAA-compliant texting app allows you to quickly communicate with your patients while making it easier to adhere to laws and regulations surrounding electronic personal health information (ePHI). The right app also allows you to store information safely, edit permissions to protect confidentiality, and automate follow-ups for better patient experiences.

To send a HIPAA-compliant secure text, you must only send administrative information like appointment information or send a link to a secure portal where sensitive information can be provided. Do not send texts that include a diagnosis, prescription information, visit summaries, or any element of patients’ medical records.

Yes, there are apps that send mass texts individually with personalization. Your chosen bulk SMS software should offer the ability to customize your texts with custom fields based on the contact’s information. You should also be able to broadcast your texts to individuals, segmented lists, and subscriber lists so that you can target and individualize your marketing texts.

Any practice who communicates with patients through text and handles their personal health information should use a HIPAA-compliant business texting app. It ensures that you’re storing and transmitting sensitive information as safely as possible which helps to build patient trust while improving accessibility to healthcare.