Secure Email Solutions for Small Practices
Privacy & HIPAA requirements of being a covered entity are top of the mind for all providers. As a small practice, your exposure may not be as large as some of the bigger healthcare units but if you have access to Protected Health Information – you are a covered entity under HIPAA and you need to take steps to secure yourself.
No – It is not a solution that will run you thousands of dollars. It is very simple actually and Practice Tech Solutions can help you get started in a frustration free way.
Free versions of gmail, yahoo mail, AOL, MSN, Live etc are not HIPAA compliant. It is because Google or any other provider will not sign a BAA with you for it. For more details, refer to our Is my email HIPAA Compliant article.
The most cost effective way we have found for small practices is use either Google Worksuite of Microsoft 365 Suite for business. Both of them are within a dollar of each other in terms of monthly cost and offer Business Associate Agreement that will help you stay compliant. On top of it – all of the services are encrypted and meet the minimum standard that is expected from securing electronic data with PHI.
You need a domain registered for your practice. If you don’t have one, we can get one for you or you can buy it yourself for as low as $ 10/ annum.
You need to provide us access to setup your domain or know how to add DNS zone records yourself
Our charge for one time setup of your Microsoft or Google Worksuite is $249. Any additional changes, maintenance or assistance is billed at $ 2 per minute. This does not include any 3rd party fees paid to Microsoft, Google, Domain registrar etc.
Google and Microsoft are similar in terms of the products they offer. We think the first big criteria for people to decide which product to choose will be the familiarity of past products. Are you more comfortable with Outlook, Excel, Word or are you more at ease with Google docs, sheets etc.
Lot of small business are on Google because it offers ease of use. While it does not have options to configure and control security and administration to the nth degree – many small businesses feel they don’t need it.
Microsoft has upped its game by building a more streamlined experience bringing its different products together to maximize productivity for virtual teams. Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, Outlook, Onedrive all offer an experience that Google does not have. Google Hangouts has never been popular or matched the features Teams meetings have. Integration between products is lackluster and you need a lot of 3rd party apps to make things work. Telephony integration is a nightmare with Google too.
Still not sure – Speak to us!
Someone from our team will respond to you within a few business hours.
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