E-mail has become a preferred method for communication for most of us. In order to maintain the confidentiality of private information and ensure compliance with privacy regulations Bon Secours Health System is implementing a new e-mail encryption service. The service will improve our ability to protect personal information of our patients, physicians, employees, and others from undesirable external parties on the Internet.

Bon Secours has always made privacy a hallmark of our electronic systems. Traditionally, any sensitive data had to be manually encrypted before it was emailed.

Beginning Tuesday, June 22, 2010, e-mails to or from Bon Secours Health System and containing confidential data will be automatically encrypted. This improvement means that our patient data is even more secure than it has been in the past.

Bon Secours’  Enterprise Security Engineer Jesse Crim, MSIA, CISSP shared his thoughts about the new system in this Q&A.

Q. How do you think the new email encryption service helps bring good help to those in need?

A. The new email encryption is essential to our Connect Care and EMR (electronic medical records) initiatives because it further safeguards the sharing of information between the patient, physician and health system, so that [the patient's] medical care is seamless.

Q. How many emails are sent at Bon Secours Richmond Health System in a day?

A. Around 60,000 emails.

Q. What kind of information is encrypted?

A. Personal information (such as social security numbers), financial information (such as account and credit card numbers) and personal health information.

Q. How do you retrieve an encrypted email sent by Bon Secours?

A. You will be asked to click on a link in the e-mail, which will connect you to our secure message center. There you will register a private password to retrieve and reply to your secure messages.

Below is a diagram outlining how our email encryption works.