This slide deck provides health centers with information and a presentation template overview of the HIPAA and electronic PHI risks related to texting and messaging that are important for health center leadership and IT managers to understand in making organizational decisions for these types of tools.

Key considerations covered within this slide deck:

• Important to understand new changes to enforcement of HIPAA as it relates to portable devices, texting, and emailing of PHI.
• HIPAA privacy and security rules need not act as an obstacle to texting, but compliance requires planning and diligence.
• All forms of communication involve some level of risk. Text messaging merely represents a different set of risks that, like other communication technologies, needs to be managed appropriately to ensure both privacy and security of the information exchanged.