Is Your Health Insurance Team Using the Right Communication Software?
With effective health insurance communications software, you can enable your team to collaborate more easily with one another without compromising privacy regulations governing the healthcare industry.
As you search for the right communication software for your team, you should be aware of the dangers of using outdated platforms and what features to look for to ensure all your communication needs are met.
What Is the Danger of Using an Outdated or Unsecured Health Insurance Communication Platform?
If your team is currently using an old communication platform, you could be at risk of not meeting HIPAA compliance standards and having sensitive data from unencrypted messages or file shares leaked. An outdated system will also likely struggle to provide the latest optimizations for an intuitive user experience, easy-to-use real-time collaboration tools, and integrations with other third-party tools.
All of these issues, among others, raise the risk of inefficient communications and even stolen information and legal troubles.
9 Features Your Health Insurance Communication Software Should Have
Due to the problems of outdated health insurance communication platforms, the HIPAA-compliant platform you choose should come with key features that improve the security, efficiency, and reliability of communications. Before you decide to invest in health insurance communication software, you’ll want to ensure it has the following qualities:
1. Secure and Encrypted Messaging
Due to sensitive member and provider data, health insurance companies must ensure that their communications are adequately secure. The platform must be capable of providing secure and encrypted messaging to significantly lower the risk of stolen data. Look for enterprise-grade security features that include encryption protocols that meet your organization’s requirements.
2. Real-Time Collaboration Tools
Real-time collaboration tools are essential for a healthcare insurance team’s efficiency, especially when facing a problem. Tools like file sharing, video calls, and group chats make it easier for your team to quickly collaborate while solving an issue.
3. Workflow Optimization and Task Management
Part of any efficient operation is making sure everyone knows what they should be doing and when they should have their tasks completed. Since effective project management for healthcare insurance companies makes your entire team more efficient, your communication platform should offer workflow optimization and task management features. With these features, your team leads can coordinate and assign tasks like claim reviews, policy updates, and customer escalations.
4. Analytics and Reporting Capabilities
When a healthcare insurance communication platform has analytics and reporting capabilities, your team can easily identify areas of improvement, reduce costs, and improve their customers’ experience. These capabilities also help with underwriting, claims management, and fraud detection.
5. User-Friendly Interface
A platform with a user-friendly interface is key to ensuring employees don’t context switch or feel tempted to use a communication tool that isn’t compliant with HIPAA. For example, if a user can’t figure out how to use the platform’s messaging system, they might use a non-compliant message app like WhatsApp to send sensitive information to another user. Doing so raises the risk of sensitive information and could result in non-compliance penalties. Additionally, a user-friendly interface reduces training times and helps employees perform their tasks efficiently.
6. Mobile Accessibility
At times, your team won’t have fast access to their computers or laptops, but will still need to access your communication platform. With a platform that prioritizes mobile accessibility for phones and tablets, your team can efficiently send messages, stay on top of critical workflows, and perform a number of other tasks from their mobile device.
7. Interoperability and Integrations With Third-Party Tools and Systems
The communication platform you choose should offer interoperability with your existing billing systems, EHR systems, provider databases, and other essential types of software necessary for your team’s work. A great platform will also offer integrations with your team’s collaboration tools to reduce context switching and the need to train employees to use new tools.
8. Audit Trails
Whether you’re facing a compliance audit or want to ensure your team is held accountable, audit trails are a necessity. These trails allow teams to track message history and actions, ensuring your team is handling tasks ethically and complying with regulations.
9. Identity and Access Controls
A robust suite of identity and access controls can help your team comply with relevant compliance standards and protect patient data. Look for controls like multi-factor authentication, SAML-based single sign-on, certificate-based authentication, session duration configuration, and user and group provisioning via Active Directory and LDAP. These security features should extend to mobile devices, with EMM software included to ensure your team can securely use their mobile devices and applications to perform sensitive tasks.
Turn to Mattermost for a Secure Health Insurance Communication Platform
If you need a highly secure health insurance communication platform, choose Mattermost. Our unified solution offers robust integrations, enterprise-grade security, and configurable playbooks for improved project management. It can be deployed as part of your HIPAA-compliant software infrastructure to ensure your team can execute critical workflows without worrying about data security or privacy.
Contact our sales team today to learn more about how the Mattermost health insurance communications platform can help your team.
