Clinician enrollment and training available for encrypted texting and paging tool MH-CURE

To address updated guidelines from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) which specify that all communications containing protected health information (PHI) must be encrypted, VUMC is implementing a new solution for clinical texting and paging that will affect all clinicians.

The solution leverages MH-CURE by Mobile Heartbeat, a clinical communications tool currently in use by VUMC’s inpatient nursing teams.  MH-CURE is an application that allows secure communications between care team members, including texting and paging.  It is integrated with Synergy and eStar, so messages can be sent to the right team member at the right time.

As part of the expansion of MH-CURE, VUMC will eventually be eliminating most of the pagers currently in use at VUMC (housestaff and some teams with specific workflows will continue to use them).  Instead, secure paging will leverage clinicians’ mobile devices—to which the vast majority of clinicians are already forwarding pages—to use MH-CURE.  To ensure VUMC meets CMS guidelines and its own cybersecurity standards, clinicians will need to pre-install the Mobile Device Management (MDM) application. The MDM application acts as a “container” for VUMC data and helps keep it safe.

Clinicians can view these instructions to install MDM and MH-CURE on their mobile device. From May 14 to May 17, there will be a series of enrollment events in locations throughout VUMC, including:

• Light Hall
• Vanderbilt Behavioral Health Hospital
• Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital
• One Hundred Oaks
• Edward Curd Lane Office Building

During these events, team members will be on hand to help clinicians install MDM and MH-CURE on their mobile devices. 

Clinicians should review more information on both MH-CURE and MDM, including FAQs to address some common concerns (such as the myths that MDM will track activity on a mobile device or make personal data on a device available for review or deletion).