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What is PeaceHealth Southwest's Secure E-mail?
A secure e-mail message system that meets all patient confidentiality laws and regulations. Secure e-mail is not to be used for urgent or sensitive care issues.
For full information about secure e-mail, go to http://www.swmedicalcenter.org/body.cfm?id=3454. You may refer patients to this web site.
Read the detailed manual in HTML or PDF format
Creating secure e-mail
- Secure E-mail is an ‘outbound' secure messaging feature that works with Microsoft Exchange e-mail service.
- Allows secure communication with patients, partners, government agencies, or anyone with whom we need to secure our e-mail communications.
- You must generate the secure e-mail. Attachments and replies related to this email will also be secure and fully encrypted.
- As the e-mail is generated within PeaceHealth Southwest, you should not request additional identifying patient information.
- Microsoft Outlook will automatically scan your e-mail to determine if it contains confidential information that must be secured. Confidential information may include, but is not limited to, PHI, financial, SSN.
- You may also identify an e-mail to be secured by typing [SECURE] in the subject line. Note: To ensure encryption, ‘secure' must be in brackets [ ]. The word is not case sensitive.
- Other than the exceptions listed here, use secure e-mail just as you would regular e-mail.
- For detailed information on how to use the service, go to http://www.swmedicalcenter.org/body.cfm?id=3493.
Saving secure e-mails
- To save the e-mail, use Select All from the menu bar on your browser (Explorer, Netscape, etc.). Copy the email and paste it into a word processing document.
- Important: When you save the information to your computer, the saved file on your computer is no longer secure, so use caution when saving.
- Once a secure message has been deleted, it cannot be retrieved.
- Secure messages are automatically deleted 24 hours after you read it.
What happens to unopened e-mail?
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If an e-mail is not opened within 24 hours of it being sent, you and the recipient will receive a notice.
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The patient may request that you notify them when you receive their email. There is no automatic notification when replies are received.
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If your email is ‘undeliverable', Outlook will send you a message.
Support/Contact Information
- PeaceHealth Southwest cannot provide direct customer support for how to use PeaceHealth Southwest secure e-mail.
- Patients are being told to ask their health care provider - that's you - to answer questions they may have about using secure e-mail.
- We should not ask for any other identifying information. Patients are asked to report any requests for additional identifying information.
- To report a possible violation of secure e-mail or to report a malfunction, e-mail securemail@swmedicalcenter.org, or call 360.514.2915.
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