A common question across the health care industry is whether appointment reminders are allowed under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. The answer is YES! Read on for more details.

Summary of HIPAA Regulations: A major goal of the Privacy Rule is to ensure that individuals' health information is properly protected while allowing the flow of information needed to provide and promote high quality health care and to protect the public's health and well-being. Health Care Providers…

• May communicate with patients via mail, telephone, or in some other manner. They may also leave messages for patients on their answering machines.
• Should take steps to protect an individual's privacy. These steps may include limiting the information disclosed in messages left on answering machines or with other persons who may answer the phone at a patient's home.
• Must give patients access to their medical records, to correct errors or omissions, and be informed how personal information is shared or used. Other provisions involve notification of privacy procedures to the patient. LabRetriever (our confidential lab results hotline software) assists with HIPAA compliance by providing patients with confidential 24-hour access to lab test results and important follow-up information by phone.
• Must comply with reasonable requests from a patient to communicate by alternative means. InphoniteVoice assists providers with such compliance by providing "do not contact" capabilities to automatically block messages by individual or by phone number/email address/Twitter user name.

Inphonite, LLC develops and markets professional, automated phone messaging systems and interactive computer telephony products that improve the profitability and productivity of a wide range of organizations.

By Michael Harris, Inphonite, LLC