Fort Davis Family Practice
HIPAA Email Rules
Fort Davis Family Practice has found that it is not reasonable or practical to encrypt our office email.
We are in very rural West Texas and most of our patients who telephone our offices are calling long distance. As a result we offer them email communications and information via our website. Patients can also fill out a prescription refill request on our website which is emailed to the office manager, whose email account is password protected.
When we receive a patient email or prescription request, we will consider that the patient's authorization to communicate via email. In our response we will discuss only the minimum information necessary to address the patent email. Fort Davis Family Practice will also add a confidentiality disclaimer in the body of each and every email.
We have posted a HIPAA privacy overview on our website. (Click here to review.)
The privacy regulations do not specifically deal with email and we have adopted this policy in order to avoid any additional costs such as those that encryption would incur.
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