Streamlining workflow and increasing productivity can be tricky for any business. For companies in heavily-regulated industries like healthcare, it can be downright daunting.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which was enacted in 1996, requires all healthcare providers to meet strict data privacy and security requirements in order to safeguard protected health information (PHI).
Note: If you are interested in learning more, check out our guide What Is HIPAA Compliance?
Many healthcare providers are terrified of violating HIPAA, and they have valid reasons to be concerned. After all, one HIPAA violation could set you back $25,000 or more.
The result: healthcare employees end up overcomplicating their workflows and spending two to three times longer on tasks.
With more software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools opting to become HIPAA compliant, that’s no longer how it has to be.
In this post, we’ll share 13 SaaS tools that are fully HIPAA compliant and can increase your business’ productivity. The best part — all of these tools cost less than $100 per month.
Acuity Scheduling
With Acuity Scheduling, you’ll never have to ask, “What time works best for you?” or play a game of email tag with a patient again. That’s because patients can quickly view your real-time availability, book their own appointments, and even pay online.
You can even send text message reminders, so patients don’t forget their upcoming appointments. If they need to reschedule, they can do that by clicking on a link in the message.
SimplePractice
SimplePractice is an all-in-one practice management software for health and wellness professionals. You can access all patient notes securely, schedule appointments, send appointment reminders, collect payments, file insurance claims, and even take video calls with patients.
This software is great for chiropractors, psychologists, therapists, speech-language pathologists, nutritionists, and substance abuse counselors.
Lua
Lua is an easy-to-use HIPAA-compliant messaging app that allows you to seamlessly connect with both patients and fellow doctors, whether you are looking for help with a diagnosis, sharing X-rays, or chatting with a patient’s family. You can also create messaging channels, integrate with other software like Box, and view detailed analytics and audit reports.
Clocktree
Clocktree is a HIPAA-compliant video messaging app. You can securely schedule appointments, message clients, and take video calls all within the platform. The best part — it’s completely free for fewer than 10 hours of video calls each month.
Updox
Updox is a healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) tool. At its core, it is a patient portal that allows you to schedule appointments and reminders, send on-demand secure messages to patients, send health alerts, connect with pharmacies and labs, and accept credit card payments.
Updox is also integrated with 80 electronic health records and serves more than 300,000 users.
G Suite
Many of the G Suite apps — including Gmail, Drive, and Calendar — are HIPAA compliant. Because G Suite is cloud-based, you can securely access your email, documents, spreadsheets, and calendar from anywhere and on any device.
It’s worth noting that not all G Suite file-sharing features are fully compliant. Check out this guide to help keep your practice safe.
Office365
If you are already using other Microsoft software in your practice, Office365 might be an ideal solution. They have HIPAA-compliant plans, and you can access Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Yammer from anywhere and on any device.
Paubox
Whether you are using G Suite, Office 365 or Salesforce, you can use Paubox to fully secure emails to maintain HIPAA compliance. Every part of your email from subject lines to calendar invites is fully secure, so you don’t have to worry about sensitive information being exposed or large-scale data leaks.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet makes collaborating on projects easier. You can quickly plan, capture, manage, automate, and report on your work. This software is particularly useful if you are looking to scale processes with confidence.
Smartsheet integrates seamlessly with software that you may already be using, including G Suite, Dropbox, Box, Office365, and more.
With more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies using Smartsheet, you can rest easy knowing that you are in good hands.
Projectplace
Projectplace is kind of like if Wunderlist, Excel, and Trello had a baby. At its core, it’s a project management software, but it can do so much more. Among many other features, it allows you to create Gantt charts, Kanban boards, manage “controlled” documents, build dashboards, and create project templates and portfolios.
Redbooth
Redbooth helps more than 600,000 teams manage their projects. Teams can streamline project management through a Kanban-like system that’s fully HIPAA compliant. You and your colleagues can quickly organize, communicate, and see the progress on any project across any device.
JotForm
Using JotForm, you can quickly create, manage, and share custom HIPAA-compliant forms with your colleagues, patients, patients’ family members, and medical researchers.
In addition, all forms can be created and accessed from your laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
You can also securely obtain signatures from patients, refill prescriptions, and even take payments through Paypal, Square, Stripe, and Authorize.Net.
JotForm has more than 4 million users across 177 countries; over 1,000 people create accounts every day.
Atlantic.Net
Atlantic.Net provides HIPAA-compliant hosting with data centers in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Orlando, Ashburn, Toronto, and London. We take care of the eight major hosting components including firewalls, encrypted VPNs, off-site backups, multi-factor authentication, private hosted environment, SSL certificates, SSAE 18 certification, and a business associate agreement.
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Using the right software and apps for your healthcare business helps you work more efficiently with patients. From optimizing communications and appointment reminders to project management, file-sharing, and invoicing, you can now streamline all of your most important business processes.
