Healthcare providers find themselves challenged as they are so often inundated with constant streams of patient information that needs to be relayed to his or her care team. But because of outdated technologies, it could put protected health information at risk or be cited as non-compliant.

Care Thread, which realizes the importance of secure and real-time access to patient information, provides mobile messaging and team-based collaboration solutions, while avoiding the security risks of provider texting and the potential for breach, noted officials.

The firm is partnering with Yankee Alliance, a group purchasing organization, to help maximize communications and productivity across care teams to better patient outcomes, said officials.

"Our team is excited to engage with Yankee Alliance members to help them identify new ways to leverage mobile devices to the benefit of their patients while maintaining full compliance with HIPAA and HITECH guidelines," observed Scott Guelich, managing director, cofounder and CEO at Care Thread.

Care Thread can now offer its technology to a wide array of healthcare organizations across the country that the GPO counts among its member pool. As a result, the partnership is expected to allow over 96 acute care hospitals and more than 12,800 member sites in the Yankee Alliance network to leverage the Care Thread platform.

"The partnership with Care Thread will enable Yankee Alliance member organizations to have access to groundbreaking technology," said Craig Shoukimas, director of contracting for Yankee Alliance.

Care Thread reportedly maps each patient's hospital provider care team, uses a suite of tools shared among team members to increase care coordination, enhance patient safety and promote improved teamwork.

This appears to be in keeping with the Yankee Alliance mission to deliver a HIPAA-compliant mobile messaging solution that increases provider productivity and satisfaction, while recognizing individual member needs and reducing costs.

The program allows providers to send encrypted, HIPAA-compliant text messages using smartphones, tablets or Web browsers across a secure platform. As these messages do not reside on the mobile device, typical risks in BYOD programs are a non-issue.

Care Thread, a Nuance Healthcare development partner, has been named App of the Month in Nuance’s For the Health of IT blog. A division of Nuance Communications, Nuance Healthcare is the market leader in providing clinical understanding solutions. Care Thread integrates speech recognition tools powered by Nuance Healthcare in the secure mobile messaging, hand-off summaries and shared task list functions of its mobile care team collaboration apps.

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