Microsoft is providing a free webmail assistance since 1996, renowned as Hotmail. Hotmail has now been supplanted with Outlook.com. Thusly, Hotmail and Outlook.com will be viewed as one and the same.
HIPAA, Email, and Encryption
There is a typical confusion that all email is HIPAA agreeable. All together for any email administration to be HIPAA consistent, it must fuse security controls to keep unapproved people from accessing accounts and for any data sent by means of the email administration to be secured to keep messages from being blocked.
Not all email accounts safely send messages. On the off chance that messages are not encoded in travel, they could undoubtedly be caught and perused by unapproved people. So as to be HIPAA-agreeable, email messages ought to be scrambled in travel in the event that they are sent outside the insurance of an association’s firewall.
Is Hotmail HIPAA Compliant?
Since Hotmail is a webmail benefit, it lies outside the assurance of a firewall. Keeping in mind the end goal to be HIPAA consistent, Hotmail would need to fuse security controls to keep messages from being blocked. Hotmail utilizes HTTPS, so any data exchanged between the program and the Hotmail site is encoded, and messages are additionally secured in travel.
Be that as it may, Microsoft has access to messages. Microsoft offers business relate understandings for Office 365, however, Office 365 does exclude Hotmail or Outlook.com email accounts, which are free shopper email administrations. Microsoft does not offer any business relate assertions for its free customer administrations.
In this way, the response to the inquiry is Hotmail HIPAA consistent is no. Without a consented to business relate arrangement, Hotmail email records ought not to be utilized.
Would you be able to Send PHI to a Patient’s Hotmail Account?
HIPAA permits social insurance associations to send PHI to patients by means of email. Be that as it may, it isn’t allowed to send messages to patients without first getting their agreement to do as such. While getting assent, you should convey to patients that the sending of PHI by means of email isn’t secure and that their data could possibly be caught and seen by people who are unapproved to see that data. On the off chance that patients are educated about the dangers and affirm that they acknowledge those dangers, PHI can be sent by means of email.
