With the latest Yahoo breach, encrypting your email is a great idea. As a medical practitioner though, you need to make sure that the people you’re communicating with are using the same email system as you are. You also need to make sure that you have a BAA signed with the email provider so as to be HIPAA-compliant. The best option, and perhaps the easiest to use, is to use your EMR’s patient portal for your communications as it forces the people communicating with you to do so securely. Otherwise, some recommendations for HIPAA compliant emails and text messaging are as follows:

• Zix Corp (zixcorp.com) – fairly inexpensive and works seamlessly through Outlook
• Tiger Text (tigertext.com) – encrypts your text messages
• Sendinc.com – Provides options such as email destruction after a pre-determined time
• G Suite – the paid version of G Suite for Gmail, Calendar, and Drive are HIPAA compliant, once you sign a BAA with them. Also, it looks more professional, as you’ll have youremail@yourwebsite.com. Pricing starts at $5/month per user for 30gb of storage, and for another $5/month, storage is unlimited.