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The Secure Texting Scam

Friday, September 07, 2012

I fondly remember going deer hunting with my father and grandfather in Pennsylvania where I grew up. We hardly ever actually killed anything. One deer hunting technique we never used was called “putting on a drive.” You start with a group of hunters at each end of the woods. The first group does the “driving” by walking through the woods making lots of noise. The other group lies hidden at the other end. The first group scares the deer towards the second group for an easy blindside kill. Even if you like hunting it’s not very sportsmanlike. The deer don’t stand a chance.

Recent developments in health information technology convince me that Washington politicians and health IT vendors are putting a drive on physicians. Together they coerce physicians into technology purchases that may be redundant and unnecessary. One such example is all the noise health IT vendors make about secure texting.

In November 2011 JCAHO posted a notice deeming the use of texting to communicate physician orders as unacceptable. This very short statement offered two supporting arguments: 1. The sender’s identity could not be verified, and 2. There is no way to preserve the text message for the medical record. The statement did NOT mention any potential for hacking, eavesdropping or any other privacy / security issue.

Read the entire article here.
  
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