Are there alternatives outside of paging. I know the risk of texting sensitive information, but I figured there’d be a more modern system than paging.

By the time I stopped working there they were using an app that had an E2E encrypted connection to the medical records system so they could actually even get test results and such as texts. The instances I was describing happened in the early days of iMessage right as we were starting the upgrade of the pager system. Most of the problem doctors had recently finished residencies or internships at hospitals that had already upgraded.

If this was in 1992 ok, valid point. Anyone currently forcing doctors to use pagers when secure alternatives that allow for better communication exist deserves pushback.

Eh, I still have a pager and so do a lot of other people in hospitals. It’s mainly because most hospitals have locations that eat cell phone reception.

wouldn’t stop using SMS instead of their pagers. Every time their excuse was “I don’t like the pager, it’s old.

Wouldn’t stop using SMS instead of their pagers for what? My office still has pagers, but that’s mainly because we’re in the hospital’s basement and don’t have very good reception.

The rest of the hospital generally works off of sms for messaging when a patient is roomed, or for being on call. I don’t know how you could break hipaa using a sms in place of a pager.

I dont think ots the SMS itself that breaks HIPPA but rather the device which is commonly used to send SMS. most peoole use their cell phones for SMS purposes and cells phones do have some secret recording capabulities if youre savvy enough with them.

Doesn’t really matter what you use as long as you aren’t utilizing any protected health information (hpi). If you are using information that can identify a patient then you need to be using an approved encrypted device. Generally providers tend to avoid utilizing that type of information just out of habit.

You don’t really discuss patient information or their care with anyone over mobile devices. If you need input from someone directly concerning patient care you tend to do it over EMR so your colleagues have context about who you’re talking about.

Most pager systems are actually huge privacy violations. $20 for a software defined radio dongle and a few minutes will give you plaintext pager notifications for hospitals across your state.

Did a project on it when I was breaking into cybersecurity.

There are encrypted paging setups, but there’s a lot of places still running legacy.

I mean as long as they aren’t sending protected health information it really isn’t a HIPAA violation. We use an encrypted pager at my clinic, but that’s just because the hospitals guidelines are stricter than HIPAAs. For what we and most providers still use pagers for nowadays could be done over an unencrypted network. Most of the time it’s just to call us to a certain room number. It’s not like people really have the patience to type out words using two buttons at more.

I was seeing patient names, room numbers, and reason for admission. Not always, but often enough.

Y’all were doing that on pagers? I don’t even know how to send anything on mine.

That’s just what I received on my receiver. I’m not affiliated with the hospital at all, so no clue why they were doing it that way.