Healthcare IT Update

How the Threat of PHI Breaches Decreases Quality of Care

Plus, your chance to ‘eavesdrop’ on security breaches among healthcare providers across the nation. Any health information professional who uncritically sings the praises of electronic health records should check out this psychiatrist’s op ed piece in The Wall Street Journal. EHRs have the potential to actually decrease quality of care “if patients fear sharing information with their doctors because they know it isn’t private,” writes Dr. Deborah Peel, a practicing psychiatrist who’s the founder of Patient Privacy Rights. “When patients realize they can’t control who sees their electronic health records, they will be far less likely to tell their doctors about drinking problems, feelings of depression, or exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.” And there’s ample evidence that patients already doubt that their medical records are private and secure, despite those long HIPAA forms they routinely sign in doctors’ offices. For example, fifty-nine percent  of…

Continue reading...

Medical Records Compliance: Train Your Staff to Handle Red Flags Rule

Health care attorney shares 5 simple questions that test your staffers’ Red Flags Rules savvy. Around midnight this Saturday, things get interesting. The ghosts and goblins will be out, and the Red Flags Rule will finally come lurching in around midnight, like a slow-moving, regulatory Frankenstein. But like the misunderstood movie monster, the Federal Trade Commission’s Red Flags Rule doesn’t have to be scary — as long as you and your staff understand it, it should be able to play nice. And while “complying with this rule is not going to be burdensome,” you do need to make sure your health care staff are on the lookout for foul play, stresses Robert Markette with Gilliland & Markette in Indianapolis. Some of Markette’s advice is tailored to home health staffers, but most of it’s relevant to other health…

Continue reading...

Cloud Computing for HIT: Stormy Weather or Silver Lining?

Here are pros and cons to know before you hop on the cloud. More and more IT companies with little to no experience in health care — but plenty of market share on the Internet — are heading into the HIT business, offering providers and other health care professionals off-site server space where they can maintain patient records. This is known as “cloud computing” — in which providers use web-based software provided by the IT company to access that server space, so that their records exist in the so-called “cloud” of the Internet. Cloud computing, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, “is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” AUDIO: Reduce your…

Continue reading...