The secure transfer of confidential information between parties is one of the important tasks addressed by HIPAA.  Many organizations are faced with the challenge of providing detailed reporting to their partners while complying with HIPAA’s stringent security standards.  One of the most common ways of distributing reports and other confidential information is through web-based Secure E-mail Systems.

Secure e-mails systems generally work by uploading the attachment that contains secure information to a web-based portal that is protected by SSL encryption.  The recipient is then sent an e-mail with a link to the web-based portal.  The recipient is required to have a separate logon for the secure e-mail system, or they are provided with a temporary logon by the sender.

While secure e-mail systems provide a controlled method to send confidential information to other parties, they are often viewed as hassle to use by end users.  Some secure e-mail systems use scripting in the e-mail sent to the recipient that includes the link to the secure content.  This is problematic because most e-mail security systems will either strip out any embedded scripting in e-mails or prevent the e-mail message from being delivered.

A more convenient solution for delivering confidential information for reporting is to use a specialized web-based application (protected by encryption and secure logon) that provides reporting tools and file downloads in one simple to use interface.  This solution offers several advantages over the industry standard secure e-mail systems for the purposes of report delivery:

Ease of Use – A specialized web-based application can provide a one stop source for reports, with an interface designed specifically for the long term storage and retrieval of information. 

On Demand Reporting – A specialized reporting application allows the end user to generate standard reports when they need them, instead of waiting for the other party to process and implement the request.

Customized Reporting – Such a solution can also be designed to allow the end user to create simple custom queries of data for custom reporting, or they can request custom reports to be generated and uploaded to the reporting application as needed.

Security – A specialized web-based reporting system offers the same level of security as its secure e-mail counterpart.

These are some of the reasons why a web-based reporting system is better suited for secure delivery of confidential reports then the traditional method of creating a report and e-mailing it to a recipient.