Home care teams work in patients’ homes, in cars and between visits. A secure communication platform protects patient data and keeps that scattered team working as one.
Quick overview
- Protect patient data from breaches and fraud.
- Meet HIPAA requirements for teams that work in the field.
- Support care with real-time messaging, video visits and clinical answers.
- Share and sign documents across the whole care team.
Home care keeps growing, and so does the amount of patient information moving between field staff, the office, physicians and families. Most breaches start with human error, and an agency whose staff are rarely in the building has more ways for that error to happen. Security is the first reason to move to a secure platform. It is not the only one.
8 reasons home health and hospice organizations need secure communication
When most of your staff are in the field, coordinating visits, managing outside providers, tracking patient progress and dispatching resources in real time is hard. Technology helps, as long as it meets HIPAA’s requirements for protected health information (PHI).
1. Fewer breaches and less fraud
According to the HIPAA Journal, network servers were the most common location of breached healthcare data in 2023, and several breaches involved PHI stored in email accounts. Hospitals can lean on on-site security. Home care agencies cannot, and they carry the same legal and ethical responsibility.
Two measures help most: mobile device management, so every team member uses a secured device, and a communication channel built for PHI, encrypted in transit and at rest.
2. HIPAA compliance in the field
HIPAA exists to keep patient information confidential while letting the right people reach it. Failing to meet it brings fines, lost patient trust and costly breaches, and in serious cases lost licenses or a closed organization.
Facilities protect health data with private networks. Field teams seeing patients and families at home do not have that, and in the past staying compliant often meant limited record access in the field or no easy way to consult a colleague. A secure healthcare communication platform removes that trade-off.
3. Faster answers with AI
AI tools can now draft letters, outline care plans and summarize notes, which gives clinicians time back when the tool handles PHI properly. Buzz puts clinical answers in the conversation with BuzzLightning, drawn from Skyscape’s licensed clinical reference, so a nurse at the bedside can check a question without leaving the thread.
4. Secure multimedia messaging with video visits
SMS and ordinary email should never carry PHI. They raise the risk of a breach and fall short of regulatory standards.
Secure messaging lets home care workers send photos, files and messages to clinicians, specialists and other departments inside a closed network, encrypted in transit and at rest. Real-time messages speed up coordination, and paired with video visits they keep patients engaged in their plan of care.
5. More efficient follow-ups
Video visits have become routine since the pandemic. With a shared communication platform, field providers coordinate home visits, skip phone tag, cut errors and shorten delays, which makes admissions and follow-up care more efficient.
6. Better collaboration across the care team
When the whole care team can share and review patient information in one secure place, care improves. See the benefits of clinical communication platforms.
Sharing information easily brings staff, patients, physicians and family into the same conversation. Stronger collaboration gives agencies a better chance to improve patient outcomes and grow census.
Give the tools to everyone involved in care, including partner agencies. Flexible groups let providers and field staff run patient-centered conversations and add a new member who can read the history.
7. Send and receive documents in real time
Patients sign forms, give consent and share insurance details. Internal teams work on care documents together. On a secure platform both happen without paper: document signing, secure fax and file sharing in one place. Records and prescriptions move in minutes, and that speed carries through to care and satisfaction.
8. Everything in one place
The platform you choose matters, because some connect to more of your work than others. Any other system that touches patient data has to be HIPAA compliant too.
Buzz for home health and hospice
Buzz is a HIPAA-ready communication and collaboration platform that lets field staff and nurses coordinate care from the office, a patient’s home or the road, on phone or desktop. Teams message in BuzzChat, call from a Buzz number with BuzzPhone, hold video visits in BuzzVideo, send and receive faxes with BuzzFax, share files in BuzzDrive and collect signatures with BuzzFlow. Families join through BuzzLink with nothing to install, and EHR and other systems connect through BuzzStreams. Skyscape signs a BAA. See the features or the Buzz FAQ.