Twenty Ways Your Facility Could Be Violating HIPAA

3. June 2010

Use this checklist on your next walkthrough to make sure you’re not overlooking crucial security breaches. It’s always a good idea to complete regular walkthroughs in your health care organization in order to quickly and easily monitor your staff’s HIPAA compliance. Read on to find a helpful tool for HIT pros in the form of a checklist.

Florida Turns to Voice Recognition to Bust Fraudsters

3. June 2010

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Pilot program in South Florida enters testing stage. Voice or speech recognition has been a useful technology for fields including special education, call centers, and national defense. The health care sector could be the next bandwagon passenger, as regulators in Florida are beginning to use voice recognition to combat fraud.

By Heart: Your Very Own iPhone Cardiac Sensor

26. May 2010

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Apple’s latest endeavor could be core to mobile health care of the future. The iPhone is smart enough to be your home or office computer’s mini-version, so what’s to keep Steve Jobs from becoming your mini-health monitor? iPhone maker Apple has applied for a patent on an integrated sensor that can monitor a user’s cardiac activity.

Software May Mitigate Tough CMS Stance on ICD-10

19. May 2010

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CMS backs up information drive for the October 1, 2013 deadline. A new application designed for the health care sector could make transition from the ICD-9 code system to ICD-10 expanded version much easier, claim IT vendors Ingenix and Health Language, Inc. (HLI). The new Ingenix Global Code Manager solution translates between the 13,000-item ICD-9 code set and the 68,000-code ICD-10 set — a feature that will help health care organizations shift to the new disease classification system by October 1, 2013.

For PHI Peace of Mind, Be Kind & Remind

12. May 2010

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Crafting log-on banners helps staff safeguard protected info. Don’t have the time or energy to tie strings around your workforce’s fingers to remind them about the importance of safeguarding the privacy of protected health information (PHI)? Well, here’s a far more practical and effective way to remind your staff to be on guard when it comes to handling PHI.

e-Billing Portal Could Save Providers $4.8B a Year

5. May 2010

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Vendors are targeting patients, too, promising easy management of statements. Vendors must be coming at health care providers from every which way these days, promising the moon. One area that’s especially active is electronic billing. This is good news for providers on several fronts: They’ll have more choices for EHR adoption, and more patients pay their bills on time, according to one company.

A Patient’s Very Own Tele-Reminder

5. May 2010

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Researchers turn cell phones into medication sensors to monitor leukemia drug. Health care providers are lining up for federal ARRA money, but they’ll mainly be hiring outside IT experts to set up programs and move the health system in the e-world. And private companies are racing to create the IT solutions that will win the providers that money – but not just with electronic records. Disease management is a field that IT has been involved with for years already.

Use Walkthroughs to Nip Security Problems in the Bud

28. April 2010

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Use inspections to keep your security compliance plan in shape. Does your security compliance program need a checkup? If so, now is the time to begin monitoring your staff so you can knock out compliance violations before they occur. Read on to discover three steps that will help you get started:

Use Role-Based Access Control to Limit PHI Leaks

21. April 2010

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Stop unauthorized PHI disclosures before they start with ‘RBAC.’ If you don’t limit the amount of confidential data your staff can access, how can you ensure that unauthorized disclosures of medical information don’t occur, in violation of HIPAA? One way is to implement a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) model to determine who has access to your organization’s medical data files. We’ll show you how to get started.

Physiology in a Chip: FCC Proposes Wireless Body-Sensor System

14. April 2010

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Wiis and Nintendos could serve medical patients a different purpose in the future. Physicians and other medical personnel may soon be using wireless device systems to monitor a patient’s health away from the confines of a health care facility, Computerworld reports. If the national broadband plan of the Federal Communications Commission gets the feds’ nod, the medical world could very well see the dawning of a new era in health care IT. The proposal states that FCC would allocate radio spectrum for new medical body area networks (MBANs), which would serve as a gateway for wireless body-sensor networks to monitor physiological information (e.g., temperature, pulse, blood glucose level, blood pressure, and respiratory health), collect the data, and transmit a report to a remote location. “While the FCC plan calls for first using the MBAN spectrum only in hospitals, medical instrument vendors say that over the longer term, they…

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