Securely Share Electronic PHI Without an EMR

PHI

Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) refers to any Protected Health Information (PHI) that is covered under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) security regulations. ePHI is simply PHI which is produced, saved, transferred or received in an electronic form.

Sharing PHI Outside of an EMR

Despite rising use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) technology within many medical practices, medical providers nonetheless have the need to be able to securely share documents that contain Protected Health Information with recipients that are outside their EMR.

A doctor or other medical professional might need to include PHI in a document sent for purposes of a referral. A doctor might be providing a second opinion, or sending the results of a specialist’s exam.

Some providers also routinely communicate with insurance companies or lawyers as part of accident or workers compensation cases.

PHI Recipients Hard to Predict in Advance

It’s hard to predict in advance who you will need to share PHI-containing documents with. Such sharing of PHI with a recipient might happen infrequently. You might only need to share documents with a particular recipient (more…)