Healthcare IT Update

Patients Don’t Trust EHR, Survey Says

Experts emphasize balance between patient care and privacy. Personal health data is less secure now than it was a year ago, according to a recent online survey by nCircle, an IT solutions provider. Almost half of the 257 people who participated in the survey said they are anxious about the fact that multiple partners of their health care providers (i.e., such as EHR vendors and insurers) have access to personal electronic information — increasing the risk of security breaches.

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Put All Your Hospital’s Data Security Policies in One Place

Make sure your security compliance program has these 4 policies. Once your hospital has created an information security management process, you are ready to create the rest of the policies and procedures that will help you comply with HIPAA security regulations. Jim Sheldon-Dean, director of compliance services with Lewis Creek Systems LLC, told participants in a recent audio conference that your hospital’s policies and procedures must reflect what your real operations are.

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Your Hospital’s Quick Start Guide to Information Security Management

Do you have a security compliance plan? Take these 5 steps first. Hospitals are understandably spending much time and money these days trying to prepare or go live with an electronic medical records system, but don’t forget that interconnected health records bring a new threat to data security. If you don’t want your facility in tomorrow’s headlines, make sure you have an information security process in place that will guide you if and when you experience data breaches. “In the future, with interconnected health records, when you can go into hospital and they can call up your records from across country, what if a chunk of it is fraudulent?” asked Jim Sheldon-Dean, director of compliance services with Lewis Creek Systems LLC, in a recent audio conference. “The importance of getting this right cannot be overstated.” The possible…

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Home Health Embraces Health Information Technology

So simple an HHA can do HIT? The joke goes that home health agencies are like cavemen among health care settings that resist HIT generally. But even though paperless home health agencies may seem like something out of a sci-fi novel, a new report reveals that more agencies are using technology to perform and track patient services than ever before. Statistics: More than 65 percent of all agencies now use electronic health records and 40 percent use point of service systems in the field, according to the National Association for Home Care and Hospice’s.  “The BlackBerry Report: The National State of the Home Care Industry Study.” NAHC and its co-sponsors conducted the study to gauge how often agencies use technology to deliver quality service, and to help agencies prepare for pending…

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