HIPAA-Compliant Texting: Live Chat + AI Chatbots
There are several platforms out there to achieve HIPAA-compliant texting between a patient and a provider. To achieve HIPAA-compliance, they follow one of the following approaches:
Require installing a dedicated mobile app on the phone, hence bypassing the unsecure SMS messaging functionality built into every phone.
They send a hyperlink via SMS, which the user can click to start a secure Web-based chat
The problem with the first approach is that most patients and even many providers don’t want to manage one more app, and have one more username and password to remember
The second approach avoids this drawback. However, it fails to exploit AI to optimize the communication. Specifically, many of the patient questions are repetitive and hence easy to pre-program. Further, providers have limited time for chatting and are generally unavailable outside business hours.
Hence, an even better approach, employed by SmartBot360, is to seamlessly combine secure live chat with AI chatbots. This means in practice that the patient starts chatting with a chatbot, and if needed (and there is an online provider) the system escalates to live chat. Alternatively, the patient may leave a message that the provider can securely access when they are back online.
For more detail, check out our blog article that contains statistics from our patients and technical details on how to seamlessly enable live chat with SmartBot360.
Patient Engagement via Texting
The above discussion is about patient-initiated communication. Texting is also a powerful tool for automated communication initiated by the healthcare organization.
SmartBot360’s platform can be used as a HIPAA-Compliant texting solution to create automated flows that consist of single messages or AI chatbots. For example, a patient screening chatbot that starts on the web can schedule an SMS/text follow-up wellness chatbot after one week, which can schedule an evaluation chatbot after two weeks. SMS automation has been successfully employed in other industries to maximize a customer’s LTV and revenue, but major platforms do not consider HIPAA compliance when businesses want to use it in healthcare. Our goal is to make it easy to achieve similar success in the healthcare industry while ensuring the security and privacy of patient data.
WAYS HIPAA-Compliant Texting Can Be USed
Follow up with patients X months after their visit to keep business on top of their mind
Upsell other products X weeks after a patient visits for a procedure
Ask if they would like to leave a review a few days after visiting business
SmartBot360 achieves HIPAA-compliance over SMS by sending secure links on SMS, which seamlessly move the conversation to a HIPAA-compliant web bot. Other platforms claim that standard SMS can be HIPAA-compliant which is a risky assumption and can lead to regulatory pains down the line. Our text automation is 100% HIPAA-compliant so you do not need to put in any extra work after setting the chatbots up.
Chatbot SMS Campaigns
You can now create a 'chatbot campaign' by uploading a list of phone numbers and deploying a secure chatbot to these users via SMS.
Chatbot campaigns are essentially interactive SMS campaigns, where a chatbot analyzes patient messages and responds similarly to how a chatbot would on a website. This leads to higher engagement rates and powerful screening.
Ways to use a Chatbot SMS Campaign
Pre-Visit Assessments
If you can filter your patients to those that have an appointment the next day, you can upload their numbers to SmartBot360 and start a chatbot campaign that reminds them of their appointment and asks if they can fill out a form to make their visit faster. Or if they text "How do I get there", the chatbot can respond with the address of your business.
Post-Procedure Recovery
If a patient had a procedure, you can enter their number and start a post-procedure follow-up chatbot to send a message after a number of days to make sure they are following recovery procedures, and answer common questions.
Employee COVID Screening
Having employees returning from a trip and going back to the office? You can schedule an SMS chatbot to ask COVID related questions and have the chatbot store their responses associated with their number.
HIPAA-Compliant Texting Benefits with SmartBot360
No Coding Setup
If your desired follow-up is not already available in our ready-to-use chatbot templates, it is easy to create a powerful follow-up bot with our drag-and-drop builder. We make it easy to get set up, but also easy to make the AI-powered chatbot as complex as needed to handle more sophisticated workflows.
Free Up Countless Hours
SMS automation is something you set up once, and maintain it along the way while it runs for however long you want. Instead of having staff manually follow up with patients, having a chatbot set up to follow up automatically after the flow is set allows for staff to focus more on patient care and increase revenue through more efficient labor use. Our automated chatbot flows can be set up in minutes with no coding experience necessary through our drag-and-drop builder.
Increase Patient Lifetime-value (LTV) and Revenue
By making sure patients are served by a chatbot that addresses their needs and concerns after their visit and following up when it is time for their next visit, SmartBot360 keeps your healthcare practice on top of their mind. Some healthcare businesses like medical spas or plastic surgeons can also use HIPAA-compliant texting to follow up with patients to promote other services, such as cosmetic creams or Botox.
Frequently Asked Questions
+ Is texting HIPAA-Compliant?
In short, SMS is not HIPAA-Compliant, but if a patient consents to receiving/sending information over SMS, then it is fine. It requires extra steps to secure it on both the patient's phone and your business's SMS software. SmartBot360 has ways to allow patients to share their private health information through SMS and results in a higher engagement rate and goal completion.
Whenever a patient needs to provide PHI, but wants to continue with sending their information through SMS, SmartBot360 can automatically ask if they consent to receiving/sending PHI through SMS, if they do not consent, the SMS-based chatbot automatically sends a link to a web chatbot where they can provide their information securely. For reminders, post-procedure follow-up, and non-sensitive chats, it can continue through SMS with SmartBot360 without prompting for SMS consent.
Patients can reply through SMS to continue the conversation with the chatbot and can freely type because the chatbot AI also analyzes SMS to understand and respond accordingly.
+ How does AI work with HIPAA-Compliant Texting?
AI in chatbots are used to extract keywords in patient messages. Most chatbots work well when patients follow the chatbot’s prompts and choices, but often fail when they go off-script.
We have found that this is very common in healthcare, as patients are impatient and want to get straight to their required information. Being able to effectively respond to such off-script patient utterances is what differentiates AI chatbots from scripted chatbots.
A more specific healthcare example is whenever patients have an emergency or a simple question asking about insurance, the bot would be able to extract the intent and guide the patient accordingly.
+ Benefits AI-powered SMS texting for patients?
Patients expect immediate replies to their requests nowadays with chatbots being used in so many non-healthcare businesses. If they cannot easily navigate to a page with the answer to their question, there is a higher chance of them bouncing and going to another provider. A chatbot can either provide the answer through the chatbot or direct them to a page with an answer.
As long as the chatbot does not mess up and provides an adequate answer, the chatbot can help guide patients to a goal while answering their questions.
+ How do patients engage with a chatbot?
Most patients see a chatbot as a way to speak to a live agent or to have their questions answered in an interactive way. Patients expect immediate replies to their queries nowadays with chatbots being used in so many non-healthcare businesses. If they cannot easily navigate to a page with the answer to their question, there is a higher chance of them bouncing and going to another provider.
Despite providing set multiple-choice options that creators expect chat requests to be, most patients still type in a question that can be answered by following the multiple-choice prompts. This is where AI comes in and enables the chat to extract keywords to then provide an answer. The chatbot can either provide the answer through the chatbot or direct them to a page with an answer.
+ SmartBot360 AI vs other chatbots?
The data sources an AI engine learns from is an important factor in whether or not an AI can pull the correct information. Most chatbots use one data source of keywords to detect and to have certain responses to those keywords, but this does not work well in cases where patients do not use provided keywords.
SmartBot360’s AI uses data from four sources to have a more comprehensive AI that does not get confused. Aside from setting up the flow diagram, SmartBot360 users can also upload a FAQ sheet that contains keywords and answers, previous chat logs, and pages on their website. AI is important in healthcare chatbots because whenever a patient has an emergency or asks something similar to an existing question, it can answer or direct them to the appropriate page with the next steps to take.
For more details, go to our SMS campaigns page.