Dive Brief:
- A California Court of Appeals has held that employers must reimburse employees for a "reasonable portion" of their mobile phone bill if they use their phone for work. While this decision involved a retail employer, it may very well affect other industries, including healthcare, observers say.
- The ruling could have significant implications for hospitals, many of whose policies rely on the fact that most clinicians use their personal phones on the job. (It's unclear how many doctors actually use such devices at work, but one survey showed that 86% of hospitals had a "bring your own device" policy already in place.)
- While HIPAA regulations have limited use of such devices for work due to privacy concerns, hospital employers have increasingly put technology in place that allows clinicians to safely share data, an approach which seems to improve clinician and employee efficiency.
Dive Insight:
Up until now, hospitals have been working on finding ways to make mobile use safe and acceptable under law. This includes imposing regulations on which applications clinicians and staff can use on the job and how they communicate with their peers. However, few have expected clinicians to switch out their device for another hospital-approved device during their work on-site. And until now, few if any have fully considered what it would cost them to pay for all clinician and employee mobile use, including potentially data and app costs.
If the terms of this new ruling are applied beyond California, hospital CIOs may be more prone to institute a new mobile policy under which they buy devices for employees and clinicians. After all, buying devices and data plans in bulk may be cheaper and easier then reimbursing end-users for the use of their own individual devices. It would also allow them to centralize security on a level that has been virtually impossible before. The ruling could provoke changes which might be good for hospitals over the long run.