Why you should not use email

Using public email to send patient information violates most privacy regulations.

Email should not be used for the secure communication of patient information because it can be accessed by people not involved in patient care.  The data, once sent, sits on an email server.  Depending on how often you empty your email account, it could sit there for years. That data can also be unencrypted on email servers.  Other times, it’s encrypted but can be read by anyone with a password to the server or email account. For instance, a former employee who knows a valid username and password could access private email accounts from anywhere in the world or an employee of the email company could read files. SafeReferral, on the other hand, requires that the computer, user and password are all on the ‘approved’ list.  Without all three, access is not allowed.  In addition, the data sent can only be unscrambled by the sender and the receiver by using workstation level encryption keys (see ‘Security’ for more details’) so that not even our IT staff can decrypt data in transit.

Upload Sites Are Not All Secure.

For many years specialty practices have used document upload sites.  These sites require the sending office to navigate to your page and fill in a static form with uploads going at the pace of their internet connections and the server speeds. With few exceptions, these sites are administered by third parties (often the same people who create web pages).  While the site might provide a secure tunnel, the data can sit unencrypted (in clear text) or vulnerable to anyone with access to the server. It is also a one-way connection. SafeReferral offers improved workflows to make it easier to send and receive documents and allow two-way, highly secure communication.  Our SSS key encryption also keeps data secure, even in transit so that only the sending and receiving offices can open and view documents.

Snail Mail is Inferior

If you’re reading this site you already understand why digital referrals are better than snail-mail.  It’s reliable but slow.  The other advantage is that a paper referral pad sits on the desk of referring offices. SafeReferral borrows from the advantages of snail-mail by putting your logo on the referring office’s computer desktop, keeping your practice front of mind but transferring data at the speed of light.

Fax is Inferior

Fax, while relatively rapid, has some major flaws.  It does not allow for the instantaneous two-way communication people are expect from email. It is also prone to technology failure,  unintelligible pictures and xrays and it take significant time to move even small size files and anyone with access to the machine can pull up old files from memory.