Email for physiotherapists
The challenge in a physiotherapy practice
As a physiotherapist you rarely work on an island. A large part of your communication goes back and forth with the (GP): you receive a referral, and after a course of treatments you send back a report on your patient's progress. In addition, you email patients their exercise plans, confirm appointments and answer questions between sessions. In each of those messages, health data passes through your mailbox.
Those reports are sensitive. They describe a complaint, a diagnosis or a recovery process, precisely the kind of information a patient wants to keep between you and the doctor, and nowhere else. If you work in a group practice with several therapists and a front desk, everyone also prefers to mail from an address that looks professional: name@yourpractice.be instead of a free address. One report to the wrong recipient, or a referral read along the way, is immediately a data breach. Secure email therefore starts with getting the basics right.
What the rules require
Under the GDPR, health data are a special category of personal data, for which stricter requirements apply than for ordinary data. Treatment reports, referrals and exercise plans that can be traced to a patient fall under this. The main line: you take appropriate technical and organisational measures, and unsecured email is usually not simply suitable for this.
What those measures precisely involve is filled in by the data protection authority and your professional body. In Belgium you look to the Belgian Data Protection Authority (GBA) and the guidelines of your professional association for kinesitherapists. The essence is the same everywhere: don't share more than necessary, check whether the doctor or patient may receive the data, and ensure encryption.
This is informative explanation, not legal advice. Consult a specialist or your professional body if in doubt. If you want to go deeper into the question, read may I send medical or patient data by email.
What your email then needs to be able to do
From that context, email for a physiotherapy practice calls for a few concrete things:
- European, GDPR-compliant hosting: so you know where your reports and referrals are stored and which law they fall under.
- Encrypted connections (TLS): so a treatment report is protected on its way to the doctor.
- Strong access security: with two-factor authentication as an extra lock on every mailbox.
- Filtering against spam, phishing and malware: because a practice, too, receives fake messages and bogus invoices.
- Reliable backups: so correspondence with doctors and patients isn't simply lost.
- Management for the whole practice: one place to create mailboxes for fellow therapists and the front desk.
Email for physiotherapists: why Mailflux fits
Mailflux gives you professional mailboxes on your own practice domain, hosted in Europe and GDPR-compliant, exactly the foundation a physiotherapy practice needs. Your data is stored in Europe, connections are encrypted via TLS, and you can optionally switch on two-factor authentication per mailbox so a leaked password doesn't immediately give access to the correspondence with your referring doctors.
Every plan includes antivirus, antispam and antimalware plus automatic backups. The spam, phishing and malware filtering works with machine learning and catches many fake messages. For the back-and-forth with the doctor, a shared calendar helps keep appointments and consultations aligned, and with shareable contact management the whole practice has the same doctor and lab contacts to hand.
Do you work with fellow therapists and a front desk? With bulk account management you create mailboxes for the whole practice in one go, plus a shared address like appointments@. The webmail works in the browser on any device, without installation. To be honest: Mailflux is not a separately certified system for medical messaging, but EU-hosted, GDPR-compliant professional email that forms a strong, secure foundation. You'll find more sectors with the same questions at who Mailflux is for and more broadly at email for healthcare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
May I send treatment reports to the GP by email?
Only securely and limited to what is necessary. A treatment report contains health data and is therefore extra protected under the GDPR. Ensure encryption and check that you're using the doctor's correct address. Consult your professional body if in doubt about the appropriate channels.
Physiotherapist or kinesitherapist?
Both are fine: in the Netherlands the profession is called fysiotherapeut, in Belgium kinesist (kinesitherapist). The information on this page applies to both. The privacy rules around treatment reports and referrals are essentially the same; the competent supervisor and professional association differ per country.
Can I arrange email for my whole group practice at once?
Yes. With bulk account management you create mailboxes under your own practice domain in one go: an address per therapist plus shared addresses like appointments@. That way the practice keeps management central and everything stays under one recognisable domain.