HIPAA Compliant Texting for Hospice Teams
Keep nurse case managers, aides, social workers, chaplains, and families connected, without texting PHI from personal phones.
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BloomText is HIPAA-compliant texting for hospice agencies. Your interdisciplinary team messages in secure group chats, and families reach a shared team inbox on your agency's number. Family members get a secure link they open in any browser, or plain SMS with the Patient SMS add-on. No app to download. A signed BAA is included on every plan, including the free plan.
Built for the daily reality of hospice communication
An Interdisciplinary Team That Is Rarely in One Room
Medicare requires each hospice patient's care to be planned by an interdisciplinary group: a physician, a registered nurse, a social worker, marriage and family therapist, or mental health counselor, and a pastoral or other counselor (42 CFR 418.56). Between visits, those people coordinate by personal text, voicemail, and hallway notes. Nothing is logged, and the aide in the field often hears last.
Families Call at All Hours
Hospice nursing must be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (42 CFR 418.100). Families text whichever nurse gave them a number, at night and on weekends. That message sits on one phone, and the rest of the team never sees it.
Several Family Members, One Patient
A hospice patient often has a spouse, two or three adult children, and a neighbor helping with care. Each one wants updates on visits and comfort care. Relaying the same message to each person from a personal phone is slow, and it leaves no record at the agency.
How hospice teams use BloomText
Secure Chats for Your IDT
Create teams and group chats for nurse case managers, aides, social workers, chaplains, and your medical director. Use @mentions to pull in the right person, and see who has read a message with "Seen by" receipts. Staff use web, desktop, iOS, or Android apps. Team messaging is free for up to 5 coworkers, then $14.50/user/month.
One Team Inbox for Family Messages
Families text your agency's number, not a nurse's personal phone. Every message lands in a shared team inbox your whole team can see, so whoever is working can answer. Texting families over SMS requires the Patient SMS add-on.
No App for Families
Family caregivers get plain SMS, or a secure blm.care link or secure email that opens in any browser. They can reply and send photos or files, such as a picture of a medication list. Your staff see when a message was viewed. Translation works both ways for families who prefer another language.
After-Hours Auto-Reply and Call Forwarding
Set a per-team after-hours auto-reply that tells families how to reach on-call help. Set a busy reply for in-office hours too. Forward calls to your agency's number to a US phone number you choose.
Visit Updates and Bereavement Follow-Up
Use templates for visit confirmations and send later to time a message for the right moment. Attach up to 10 photos or files per message. With the Patient SMS add-on, send a bereavement program update or a weather notice to a CSV list of up to 20,000 contacts, and schedule, pause, or resume it.
Bring In an Outside Physician or Pharmacy
Invite an attending physician, pharmacy contact, or facility nurse by email to a secure chat. Outside collaborators are free and unlimited. Video visits from a chat are available on request: the family joins from a link with no app, and our team turns the feature on for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
- No. Family members receive plain SMS, or a secure blm.care link or secure email that opens in any browser. They can reply and send photos or files from their own phone. SMS to families requires the Patient SMS add-on. The free plan uses secure links and secure email.
- Yes. BloomText signs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) on every plan, including the free plan. You can hide patient phone numbers from non-admin staff and export any conversation as a PDF transcript.
- Each team can set its own after-hours auto-reply, so a family texting at night gets an immediate answer with your on-call instructions. You can also forward calls to your agency's number to a US phone number. Messages that arrive overnight stay in the shared team inbox for the day team.
- Yes. Each family member can text or reply from their own phone. Your team sees every conversation in the shared inbox, so a spouse and three adult children can each reach the agency without relying on one nurse's phone.
- No. BloomText does not integrate with hospice EHRs. It runs alongside your EHR for messaging. You can import patients and family contacts from a CSV file, with fields for name, date of birth, phone, email, MRN, and tags.
- Yes. Medicare requires hospices to make bereavement services available to the family for up to 1 year after the patient's death (42 CFR 418.64). Your bereavement team can message families one to one, or use templates and send later to time each note. With the Patient SMS add-on, you can send program updates to a whole bereavement list.
- There is a free plan with a signed BAA. Team messaging is free for up to 5 coworkers, then $14.50/user/month. Texting families over SMS requires the Patient SMS add-on. See the pricing page for current plans.
