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Secure, HIPAA-compliant SMS for healthcare
Enhance patient engagement, optimize staff coordination, and ensure compliance with a secure medical texting service. Use HIPAA-compliant texting for appointment scheduling, reminders, follow-ups, recruiting, and more.
Trusted by leading companies
What is a medical texting service?
A medical texting service is a secure, HIPAA-compliant SMS platform that healthcare providers use to communicate with patients and staff. It enables fast, efficient, and compliant messaging for scheduling, reminders, and internal coordination while protecting patient privacy.
Healthcare teams use medical texting services for:
- Appointment scheduling and reminders
- Staff shift coordination
- Patient follow-ups and surveys
- Form completion and bill payment reminders
- Recruiting and staffing
Benefits of using SMS for healthcare
Achieve full HIPAA compliance
Ensure HIPAA compliance with access management, user roles, and permissions that safeguard electronic protected health information (ePHI). Control who can access sensitive data, enable secure logins with SAML-based SSO and 2FA, and automate opt-in management to simplify compliance.
Integrate SMS with your CRM and healthcare systems
Connect Heymarket’s HIPAA-compliant texting service with your existing CRMs like Salesforce and patient management platform. Sync contact data, automate workflows, and trigger healthcare SMS messages based on system updates for hands-free patient and staff communication.
Gain full visibility into patient and staff communication
Centralize all patient and staff conversations in a shared inbox, ensuring every message is accessible for auditing and compliance assurance.
Text professionally with AI-assisted messaging
Reach more people with translation
Empower your team to help more people in more languages.
Refine your texts in one click
Instantly correct, formalize, shorten and expand texts to make them more effective.
Give quick, contextual answers
Upload your knowledge base to generate hyper-personalized messages.
Streamline staff scheduling and internal communications
Quickly notify staff of shift updates, changes to the schedule, or emergency alerts with SMS for healthcare teams. For teams embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem, Heymarket’s Microsoft Teams integration helps keep all team members informed of any important updates and schedule changes without leaving their internal collaboration platform.
Secure your account with custom roles and permissions
Control who can access, send, or manage patient-staff communications with custom role-based permissions. Create your own roles, establish an account hierarchy, then assign specific permissions to each group to ensure you stay compliant and protect ePHI.
Improve staff productivity with automations
Streamline scheduling, billing reminders, and team coordination with personalized automated messaging that seamlessly translates to real-time, one-on-one conversations that are sent to a shared inbox, helping team members solve scheduling conflicts or collect additional information quickly.
Reduce no-shows with SMS appointment reminder campaigns
Send text reminders leading up to the appointment date with automated SMS appointment reminders. Create campaigns using text templates with custom fields to send personalized texts that include patient names, visit times, and rescheduling options, reducing last-minute cancellations and missed appointments.
Follow up with patients to check in and collect feedback
Improve patient care and satisfaction with post-visit healthcare SMS follow-ups. Use drip campaigns to check in after appointments, collect feedback, and provide ongoing support—all through secure, HIPAA-compliant messaging.
Simplify healthcare recruiting with fast and personalized messaging
Accelerate your hiring with less administrative burden using SMS for recruiting. Allow candidates to text you to show their interest and provide consent, then send personalized mass texts when new positions open. You can also field replies through two-way conversations and use automated text campaigns to schedule interviews, send follow-ups, and jumpstart onboarding.
Register quickly and stay compliant
Medical texting best practices
Use these strategies for compliant, engaging communication.
Collect opt-in before messaging
HIPAA and TCPA regulations require you to obtain explicit consent from patients or staff before texting them, which you can do by having them text keywords, complete an online form, or provide consent in person.
Only send administrative information
Use healthcare texting to send administrative updates like appointment reminders and scheduling questions. Do not share private health information, like test results, diagnoses, treatment plans, or prescriptions via text. Instead, send patients a notice that they have new information available and provide a secure portal link.
Limit access with role-based permissions
Use role-based permissions to ensure that only authorized staff can see or send patient messages to avoid compliance concerns and protect sensitive information.
Personalize your messages
Use custom fields to insert patients’ names and appointment details to personalize your texts without exposing sensitive information.
Send messages at the right time
Avoid sending texts too early or late in the day for compliance. If you need to contact someone outside of normal hours, schedule a text to deliver during business hours.
Monitor messaging for performance and compliance
Use reporting and analytics tools to track delivery rates, response times, and HIPAA SMS compliance to ensure you’re offering the best patient experience possible.
HIPAA-Compliant Text Messaging for Healthcare Providers
Enhance patient communication, reduce no-shows, streamline billing reminders, and strengthen patient-provider relationships with secure, HIPAA-compliant SMS solutions.
Book a demoMedical Texting FAQs
Want to know more about SMS for healthcare? We’ve answered some common questions below.
Connect with our team if you need any additional information.
How do you text a patient?
Healthcare providers can text patients using a secure medical text messaging platform like Heymarket. This platform will allow you to upload patient contact information (including phone numbers) through a CSV file. Then, you simply use the messaging feature within the platform to select a contact, create a text message, then send it or schedule it for later.
Is it illegal to text a patient?
No, it is not illegal. But before anyone on your team—including nurses, physicians, and administrative workers—texts a patient, you must ensure the patient opts in to receive messages. To comply with HIPAA and practice secure medical texting, healthcare workers must not send sensitive patient information. This includes test results, diagnoses, and more. Visit this article for a closer look at SMS compliance.
What are the risks of texting in healthcare?
Texts are insecure once they reach a patient’s hands. Anyone can read a patient’s texts if they have access to their phone. Also, hackers can intercept text messages sent and received from a mobile phone. For secure messaging, healthcare workers must use a HIPAA-compliant texting platform and only send administrative information—never electronic protected health information (ePHI).
What is HIPAA-compliant texting?
HIPAA-compliant texting is texting that adheres to HIPAA guidelines. You can support HIPAA SMS compliance with a secure healthcare text messaging platform. It should encrypt texts in storage and in transit, as well as support automatic opt outs. To truly achieve compliance, your team must review and adjust your internal messaging and data processes. You should also consult your legal team on how to use texting in your specific organization.
How do I make SMS HIPAA compliant?
You can follow several steps to achieve HIPAA-compliance with text messaging for healthcare:
- Choose a secure texting platform like the one described above.
- Never send sensitive information or ePHI, like test results, diagnoses, case details, conditions, treatment plans, and more.
- Only send administrative information, like appointment reminders, scheduling requests, standard hospital or clinical operations details, bill alerts, delivery updates, feedback requests, or portal notifications.
- Make it easy for patients to opt out with a simple keyword, like NO or STOP.
Note that compliance with legal frameworks, such as HIPAA, may be fact- and context-specific. The information contained on this page should not be relied upon as legal advice or to determine how HIPAA or other laws or standards apply to your use of SMS and our service.
This SMS compliance information is provided “as is” and may be updated or changed without notice. You may use this page for your internal reference purposes only.
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