7 Best HIPAA-Compliant Live Chat & Messaging Apps

A recent study found that 62% of patients prefer to consult with doctors remotely when possible. Another study found that the number of messages being sent between internal healthcare providers increased by 29% in just six months between 2022 and 2023. Those messages were being sent without any formal mandate; healthcare providers were adopting and using the technology by choice.

Whether you need to communicate with your patients or with the other providers who are in charge of patient care, live chat and messaging apps make it easier to get the right information to the right person fast. Patients get answers without rearranging their day, and care teams can communicate in real-time to improve patient experiences and react to issues instantly.

However, if the messages you're sending contain any protected health information (PHI), you can't just download any old messaging app. You'll need an app that's compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); it requires covered entities to take measures that help prevent the disclosure of PHI without patient knowledge and consent.

Though adhering to all of the law’s requirements might seem overwhelming, the seven HIPAA-compliant live chat and messaging apps below will help ensure that your patient data is kept safe.

1. Help Scout – Best for speciality practices

Help Scout is an intuitive and affordable communications platform that's great for specialty practices like mental health, physical therapy, veterinary, and home healthcare that don't need all of the bells and whistles of a more comprehensive (and pricey) PRM system. It's a simple platform that lets you communicate with patients via live chat and email while collaborating on responses as a team.

Engage in real-time conversations with patients using Beacon, Help Scout’s live chat widget. Place a Beacon on any web page to allow patients to contact your team. Then, you can view and reply to chat messages, create saved replies to respond to FAQs, assign conversations to specific team members, leave colleagues private notes, and view patient information in a sidebar to provide contextual responses.

If a patient's questions can't be answered immediately, you can easily transition the chat to email. Email conversations show up in Help Scout's shared inbox where anyone on your team can view and reply to them. Set up teams to assign messages to specific departments, add tags to categorize and organize requests, and create SLAs to ensure you're getting back to patients in a reasonable timeframe.

Help Scout also has a lot of features that reduce your team's workload and let you reply to patients faster. AI Drafts will generate a draft reply to any email conversation (using knowledge from previously sent messages) that you can review and edit if needed before sending. AI Assist helps you refine messages you write yourself, cleaning up spelling and grammar issues or making replies shorter or longer. And AI Answers can provide patients with answers to FAQs instantly without your team needing to get involved.

AI Answers is powered by your knowledge base, which you can create in Help Scout using Docs. Docs gives you a place to document things that don’t involve PHI, like general practice info, your policies, what types of insurance you accept, and more, so patients can find that information on their own. When combined with AI Answers, patients don't even have to search — they can simply ask a question and get an instant, accurate reply.

Finally, advanced permissions give you granular control over what people can see and do in the platform, Messages let you share information with patients proactively on your website (like a special you're running or a notice that the office will be closed), and reports give you insight into how many messages you're receiving, when your highest volume times are, and much more.

Learn about HIPAA compliance in Help Scout.

Pricing

Free trial available. View Help Scout's current pricing.

2. TigerConnect – Best for internal messaging

TigerConnect is built for internal communication between care teams who need to coordinate quickly. It's designed for hospitals and large practices where getting the right information to the right provider can directly affect patient care. Staff can send texts, photos, and voice messages to each other — and make video calls — from their phones or computers. All messages and calls are encrypted and auditable. 

TigerConnect also has built-in shift and on-call scheduling. Schedules can be built on the platform, and they sync with messaging in a unique way: instead of staff members having to figure out which specific individual they need to contact, they can send a message to a default like "the on-call cardiologist" or "the charge nurse on 4 East," and TigerConnect automatically routes the message to the person on duty.

If you don't want to use TigerConnect for scheduling, it integrates with other healthcare scheduling platforms like Amion and QGenda so you can still use the role-based messaging feature. And for organizations that need to handle clinical alerts, TigerConnect integrates with EHRs like Epic, Oracle Health, and MEDITECH. Alerts can be escalated automatically if no one responds within a set timeframe. 

There's also a patient engagement add-on that makes it easy to communicate with your patients before, during, and after their visits without the need for an additional account, app, or password. Patients receive an SMS message with a link to a secure messaging environment when healthcare providers need to communicate sensitive information. You can also send appointment reminders and post-visit follow-ups.

Learn more about HIPAA compliance in TigerConnect.

Pricing

No free trial offered. Contact TigerConnect for pricing.

3. Rocket.Chat – Best for security-focused organizations

Rocket.Chat is designed for organizations like government, critical infrastructure, and healthcare where data security is imperative. It's configurable for communication across multiple channels, including live chat, and it can be used for both internal and external communications, making it a good option for small medical practices like doctors' offices and other private practices.

There are a couple of different ways to provide live chat services to your patients with Rocket.Chat. You can add a chat widget to your website easily, similar to Help Scout's Beacon, by pasting a code snippet into your site’s source code. However, if your team has more developer resources, you can create a more tailored experience by embedding the platform’s chat engine into your web and mobile apps.

Once chat is live for patients, your team can manage incoming messages through a shared workspace, which includes useful features like canned responses, private notes, and file and image sharing. You'll see a full history of communications with a patient alongside each new message, workflows ensure communications go to the right person, and you can launch a chatbot to answer questions automatically.  

When it comes to internal communications, Rocket.Chat offers an experience that's similar to Slack. There's direct messaging, channels for group discussions, conversation threads, reactions, and even the ability to loop in vendors who use other platforms. Rocket.Chat can pull in vendor messages from Slack, Microsoft Teams, and email so you don't have to create accounts for vendors to communicate with them.

Learn more about HIPAA compliance in Rocket.Chat.

Pricing

No free trial offered. Contact Rocket.Chat for pricing.

4. ModMed – Best combined EHR and patient communication platform

ModMed is a robust platform that combines electronic health records management with patient communication tools and practice management features. Its comprehensiveness makes it a good fit for any healthcare organization looking to either modernize their operations or consolidate their tools.

Patient communication in ModMed starts with scheduling. Patients can book their own appointments via a text message, live chat, or through the system's patient portal. They can also reschedule and cancel appointments as needed, and the system automatically sends appointment reminders. Practices can specify when specific types of appointments can be scheduled and customize outgoing messages.

If you need to reach multiple patients at the same time, you can use ModMed's broadcast messaging feature. This is helpful if you need to let patients know about an unexpected office closure or want to inform them about a new special you're running.

Patients can also fill out all required forms and upload insurance documentation online before their appointments, or you can set up a kiosk on a tablet so they can fill out the forms electronically when they arrive for their appointments. Copay payments can also be accepted using the kiosk, or patients can log into the patient portal to pay for costs their insurance didn't cover.

After the appointment, providers can send post-visit instructions, bills, and lab results to patients, which are accessible even if a patient doesn't have a login for the ModMed portal. You can also send patient satisfaction surveys to collect feedback on how your practice is performing or to encourage patients to leave a public review for your practice on the review sites of your choice.

Beyond patient communications, ModMed also offers a telehealth module for conducting visits online and a scribe feature that uses AI to listen to appointments and automatically write visit notes in your EHR. All of its tools can also be customized by practice type, giving you access to features like practice-specific ICD codes and templates, and it's pre-connected with 150 clinical labs for simple electronic data transfers.

Learn about HIPAA compliance in ModMed.

Pricing

No free trial offered. Contact ModMed for pricing.

5. OhMD – Best for teams that want to automate their work

OhMD is a healthcare messaging platform that allows patients, healthcare providers, and staff to stay in touch through live chat, text messaging, video visits, phone calls, forms, and surveys. Healthcare organizations can use the software to add a live chat widget to their website, and staff can respond to chats from a shared inbox using features like saved replies, tags, internal notes, and assignments.

OhMD also lets you manage phone and SMS communications with patients. It updates your existing phone number to allow it to accept text messages, and all phone calls and text exchanges appear in OhMD's system. Once a conversation is complete, your team can send the data to your EHR. OhMD integrates with over 85 EHRs, including Epic, eClinicalWorks, Healthie, DrChrono, and ModMed.

For teams that want to automate some of their work, OhMD is a great option. Its AI phone agents can answer patient phone calls for you to provide general information automatically or collect the details someone on your team needs to fulfil the request (like a prescription refill or referral) quickly. You create scripts for the AI to use so it knows how to handle calls, and a human can jump into the call at any time.

When a human does need to take over a call, the AI provides a full transcript so they can get up to speed quickly. There's also a feature that automatically transcribes voicemails you receive so you can read the transcripts of after-hours messages and act on them immediately, and you'll get AI-powered routing to send phone calls to the right extension immediately without having to set up an IVR decision tree.

All of OhMD's plans are HIPAA-compliant, so you won't have to sign up for the highest-cost plan to get the security features you need. Its lowest-cost plan is great for teams that need the communication features but aren't interested in automation. However, for automation, custom onboarding, or access to the platform's reporting feature, you'll need to upgrade to higher-cost plans.

Learn more about HIPAA compliance in OhMD.

Pricing

No free trial offered. View OhMD's current pricing.

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6. Twilio – Best for IT and development teams

If you work in healthcare tech support and are looking for a system you can build to your exact specs and deeply customize, Twilio might be the right choice. Twilio lets you set up communication channels across live chat, SMS, messaging, voice, and video. You build the tools you need using the platform's APIs, and you can decide how to host the platform: local, in your own cloud environment, or in Twilio’s cloud.

Twilio maintains official SDKs for most major coding languages, including Node.js, Python, Java, C#, PHP, Ruby, and Go, alongside thorough API documentation. There's also a free sandbox environment for testing before you go live, a visual workflow builder that lets you collaborate with other team members on communication logic, and a robust integration library. 

If you like Twilio but don't have developer resources to build it from scratch, Twilio's Flex is a workable option. It lets you set up a contact center using pre-built themes, components, and plugins; add channels like live chat, messaging, or SMS; and connect the platform to other software in your tech stack, like your EHR, billing software, and scheduling system.

For patient communications, you can set up two-way SMS for appointment reminders and follow-ups, IVR systems for routing phone calls, and video conferencing for telehealth visits. Twilio Verify can authenticate a patient's identity before any PHI is shared, and webhooks let you push conversation data into your EHR or pull patient context into a live interaction.

One thing to keep in mind about Twilio is that its pricing is usage-based, and each module of the tool (SMS, email, voice, video, chat, etc.) has its own individual pricing. It's possible that this might lead to pricing that's much lower than alternatives — or much higher. The cost you pay each month depends on your usage and can be unpredictable if you have higher- and lower-volume months of the year.

Learn more about HIPAA compliance in Twilio.

Pricing

Free trial available. View Twilio's current pricing.

7. OnPage – Best for critical messaging

OnPage is a messaging app that lets doctors, nurses, and other staff communicate with each other using a mobile app. They can send messages as text or voice notes and attach images. The great thing about OnPage's alerts is that they will persist for up to eight hours until they're read, ensuring critical messages aren't missed. It's a great alternative to TigerConnect for smaller hospital systems with tighter budgets.

While messages are sent between staff using the platform's mobile app, there's also a web console that administrative staff and leadership can use. In the console, you can create on-call schedules and set escalation policies for critical alerts that go unread. You can also set up alerts that automatically notify your IT team of incidents like server outages or security breaches.

If you want OnPage to function similarly to TigerConnect where it automatically sends alerts to the individual who's handling issues during that shift (physicians, nurses, or IT support), you start by creating a group in OnPage and assigning members to it. A regular group dictates which individuals will receive the initial alert, and an escalation group specifies who should receive it if the original message isn't read.

Once you have groups built, you can create on-call schedules for the members of those groups in OnCall's scheduling tool. Build shifts individually, or set up recurring shifts if team members work the same shifts week after week. The schedule and groups you created are then used to allow other employees to send a message to a group and have it delivered to the right person even if they're not sure who's on call.

When employees are working, they can toggle messaging on, and when they're not working, they can toggle it off so they're not disturbed. When a critical message comes in, OnPage plays a loud notification to alert the recipient that something needs their attention, and the alert will continue until the message is read. After the message is opened, the recipient can reply to it or forward it to someone else.

Finally, pre-written responses (e.g., "On my way") can be clicked to respond to messages in seconds, messages can be marked as low priority or high priority to distinguish critical alerts from FYIs, and message senders will see an indicator showing whether or not the message has been read.

Learn more about HIPAA compliance in OnPage.

Pricing

Free trial available. View OnPage's current pricing.

How to choose the right platform for your team

Choosing the right live chat or messaging app starts with understanding your needs. Do you need an app for patient communications, internal messaging, or clinical alerts? What types of messages will you send; do you need simple automated appointment reminders or more robust tools for real-time back-and-forth discussions? Answering these questions should help you narrow down your options to an initial list.

If you're a smaller team, look for tools that are easy to set up and manage without heavy IT involvement. Larger organizations may benefit from more robust platforms that integrate with EHR systems and support internal collaboration.

Consider which communication channels your patients/coworkers prefer — whether that’s live chat, SMS, or in-app messaging — and make sure the tool you choose supports them securely. Most importantly, ensure the platform offers a signed BAA and clear HIPAA compliance features.

With the right fit, you can streamline communication, stay compliant, and provide a better experience for both patients and staff.