Security
Health care providers in the US are bound to comply with HIPAA regulations. These regulations specify what patient information must be held in confidence. Something as seemingly trivial as a name is viewed by HIPAA as protected health information. For this reason, security has always been a top concern for the industry when dealing with the adoption of patient portals. While there may be systems that are not HIPAA compliant, certainly most patient and practice portals are secure and compliant with HIPAA regulations. The use of SSL and access control patterns are commonplace in the industry. Patient access is typically validated with a user name and password.
Read more about this topic: Patient Portal
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