Today many patients may want to communicate with their clinical team with text messages. In 2018, Roger Severino, Director of the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that texting personal health information (PHI) with patients is permitted if a clinicians 1) informs the patient that texting is not secure; and 2) obtains authorization and written consent from the patient. This is the same policy the OCR uses towards sharing PHI in unprotected emails. There are also today a large number of vendor supported secure text messaging programs that a clinician/clinic can purchase.
Important things to consider: