I know, I’ve belabored the “release of information” subject.
It’s good to know somebody else is thinking about this, and in a far-reaching way. SATVA, our industry’s software vendors’ association recently posted an interesting article on Behavioral Healthcare’s magazine that lays out the importance of a “consent to disclose” form (I’ve called it a Release Of Information form or ROI) in the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Without a single, signed form in common, disclosure of the consumer’s health information can’t be shared without breaking at least one of 32 federal and state laws that protect consumers’ confidentiality. The goal would be to make a common electronic form available in all EHRs and RHIOs in order to assure a consumer gets the best treatment from any healthcare facility he walks into and maintains health information confidentiality.
Naturally, consumer records electronically shared among their professionals providing care can reduce duplicate tests, duplicate data input and other wasteful activities, and even prevent medication errors that could cause big trouble for consumers, simply because the professionals are acting as a team, not lone guns. None of these benefits can be realized without a solid, mutually accepted ROI or consumer consent agreement (same thing, I’ll stick with ROI for now)
SATVA even delivered a specification for the consent form, (amazing these guys agree on something given the competitive spirit in the software industry), stating a number of ways RHIOs are affected by the protective laws I mentioned above.
The ROI would deliver instant approval to share information, which means more timely treatment for the consumer and less pain, whether physical or emotional. Wouldn’t it be great if you moved from Oregon to New York and your new professional had access to your chart across the country when you came in for your appointment? That’s electronically possible now, except for the lack of an ROI.
So, why is this little stumbling block to all these benefits a problem, you ask? There must be a way to overcome the problems.
Right now, all it takes is a signed form to share the data between providers and that can be faxed. A major drawback of this system is that most providers have completely different forms to fill out, and filling out multiple forms them takes expensive professional time. Then there’s the clerical time and energy spent faxing different professionals for their specific ROI forms, getting them signed, and then faxing them back before the patient record is transferred. Then, depending on the professional’s legal limitations and technological status, the information sought (could be many pages) would need to be faxed, mailed or shipped. Now multiply all that effort and trouble by the number of physical and mental health professionals involved in the consumer’s care.
Oh, and next, multiply that by the number of consumers seeking care that day among all the professionals involved. The energy and expense both mount up.
I’ve commented quite a bit on Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) or Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs), and they’re key to this subject. RHIOs need to become intimately acquainted with those laws and rules I mentioned earlier…they have the same responsibilities to consumers as software vendors and professionals. This means the electronic ROI would need to be a common design among all the software vendors, professionals and their RHIOs, and also maintain the consumer’s stamp of approval and specific mention of the professionals involved, whether it’s an individual or an organization. That’s quite a job, too, but it can be done more simply and elegantly with electronic transfer of the health information data. The ROI also needs to cover why the consumer’s information is being shared; is the reason clinical, financial or something else? Since a RHIO can’t pass along information to anybody who’s a member without authorization, some sort of accountability needs to be built into the string of data sharing and availability to assure consumer confidentially.
Like I said, it’s a big job. The good news is that SATVA says they’ve already built it and have tentative approval of SAMHSA, and all the professionals and RHIOs need to do is buy it…but then again, maybe it’s free.
How likely is that?
Read more →The number of folks able to validate “best practices” with significant research data is startling…meaning it ain’t many.
There are a ton of “best practices”, or different “brands” of therapy in use across the nation with no single method of proving on a grand scale how well they work. Maybe if they were tracked in an interoperable Electronic Health Record (EHR), and shared among professionals, a handful of these methods of treatment would have the data needed to prove their worth. The fact is, we’re behind the curve in this.
Recently H Wesley Clarke, director of SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment shared his feelings on the condition of Health Information Technology in the field at the 2011 National Conference on Addiction Disorders, and he’s convinced that the EHR is under-deployed, to say the least.
It’s all about data. Clarke understands that without analyzing the data that could be gathered using the EHR, professionals in addictions treatment are slow – as snails – to get the job done. In my experience, there are some professionals who believe documenting their treatment in the EHR slows them down and detracts from therapy. The question becomes, how do they know their brand of treatment, what they believe to be their “best practice” is the best way to help the consumer? Without documentation and a means to measure outcomes we’re relying on gut feeling, and when gut feelings are stood alongside outcomes measurement data, who knows whether they’ll be borne up unless we compare?
When a consumer paying for her own treatment (no insurance or Medicaid), she may want to know where her money’s going. She may respond better to the professional if there’s a study that can be quoted showing the effectiveness of the best practice she’s participating in. One thing I’ve learned after a number of years serving professionals with EHRs is that the more data you have, the more impressive the study. When I run across studies with absolutely huge data samples used to draw the conclusions, I’m inclined to believe the study’s true without even reading the study or book…call me trusting, but it’s trust based on data.
Assessments are the EHR‘s greatest tool to provide measurable outcomes…ask enough folks with substance abuse problems questions about suicide, and compare the results with people who lack the addiction disorder, and you start to see patterns. How do we know the measurement tool (the assessment) is worth its salt? Are we asking the consumer the right questions? Once we determine there is a danger of someone hurting themselves and we decide to treat it, how do we know that best practice used to treat that danger is the most effective treatment we can use?
Without data, we don’t know.
Without the EHR, our data can be insufficient. Without computer assistance, analyzing data just takes too long and is prone to mistakes in data compiling and analysis.
OK, so the EHR solves the local data problem in a professional practice, clinic or multi-location facility…When does it happen? There are a number of professionals who have used electronic documentation for a number of years, however the bulk of our field is in the dark…Email and Facebook on the work computer, and maybe Word documents about patients, which is a no-no when it comes to confidentially.
The EHR is the best tool going to help improve treatment. So, let’s get started, it will make H Wesley Clarke happy and is likely to save lives and help a bundle of consumers be happier, too.
That still leaves the question of how to get huge data samples an open issue. That requires interoperability and data sharing among professionals across the nation, and next time I’ll share some expert opinions (other than my own) on how to get that job done.
Read more →Perhaps the greatest service information technology can deliver to the mental health and addictions field goes substantially untapped.
I talked with a half-dozen of the largest social service/mental health/addiction treatment organizations in New York City recently, and felt unsurprised and somewhat saddened that a couple highly placed folks shared that their organization was just now getting around to setting up Electronic Health Records(EHRs) with integrated tools to measure outcomes of consumer treatment. One of the most important tools we have to measure treatment effectiveness is data, a resource that’s largely untapped.
Treatment data feeds into that fabulous tool, the EHR, and the outcomes of different approaches can be measured. Effective treatment documentation is not just therapy session notes and how certain best-practices (motivational interviewing, REBT and other types of therapy) contribute to improvement of a consumer’s condition, but also blood, urine and saliva toxicology and breathalyzer results. Assessments have been administered for many years, and the outcomes of a large number of these tools have been ignored, simply because gathering and analyzing the data takes people with time to pour over paper-based records. These days, even EHR data is being ignored…but less and less as more viable data is gathered…it’s used to justify grant funding for a number of projects.
When a consumer comes to a professional, he can be desperate for help. Healthcare solutions, even for mental health and addictions treatment, gain attention and value by proving they work. Treatments can be proven effective and are more likely accepted by professionals into common usage when based on a lot of consumer results for treatment. Results gathered in an EHR tend to be more reliable because the samples can be bigger, from a number of locations, and data can be shared, contributing to outcomes studies on a grander scale. Plus, analyzing the results becomes a quicker process with computers doing the math. When a consumer is given a bi-weekly assessment, asked a bundle of questions about, say, how he feels as certain treatments progress, those check boxes the professional clicks on equate to changing the field for the better. One day, when the National Health Record is a reality, participants in treatment studies can include millions of de-identified consumer results nationwide. This will result in bringing more effective treatment to the field more quickly.
Sure, a few single agencies and perhaps a couple collaborations have been paying attention to this type of data; that’s how we know some treatment helps consumers with different diagnosis’ have better lives, and how the EHR can contribute to the effort. In a large part, however, as supported by the conversations I mentioned above, EHRs are either not on line at all or the companies are still implementing something that suits their need…or more interestingly, planning to build their own. Also interestingly, most software vendors include functionality like assessments, progress notes, treatment plans, scheduling modules and other commonly needed features, but the two items that get the most attention are the design tools and the reports used to develop this key functionality all over again so it’s different for each agency using the system.
What if there are better tools than what professionals are using now? How will they know without analyzing outcomes?
To the rescue comes NIATx, consultants like MindHealthBiz, and a host of other organizations providing education, advice and services to make sure one of the outcomes of the EHR is measurable outcomes data.
It’s all evolving now, and that makes for a continuation of the most exciting time ever in American healthcare.
Read more →I don’t believe it.
I’ve reviewed telemedicine a few times and new information about the subject grabs me. I recently heard a professional question the effectiveness of telemedicine, and since I hadn’t looked into studies about this, it seemed prudent to discover whether new effectiveness studies had overruled my previous positive opinion.
I’ve been a supporter of telemedicine for mental health and substance abuse recovery and treatment, and if anything, the presence of electronic solutions are being used more and more. Electronic resources have been around a while, including apps for iPhones and BlackBerry smartphones with links to addiction recovery materials whenever the consumer feels like they need a quick recovery tune-up. The ability to perform and possibly record sessions for consumers in remote areas using computers’ cameras and microphones to bring people into a virtual session sounded nothing but good and research backed that opinion up, so it hasn’t occurred to me to question its effectiveness till now.
A ton of supportive resources are on the internet and it turns out that electronic solutions are varied and well suited for a number of purposes.
I’ve covered therapy sessions via secure internet connections, and discovered that the availability of video in the session delivers the great benefit for the professional to better gauge the consumer’s body language…it can be difficult to pick up guarding postures and crossed legs and arms on the telephone. If you’re interested in telemedicine for mental health, you can see Demos and connect with one of the experts Secure Health. There are a number of companies providing secure telemedicine services, which is important, giving the nature of our industry, just search the internet to see other companies. There are just too many to mention here.
Last year CNN published a story on this subject citing an increase of success in depression treatment from 24 percent to 38 percent when on-line sessions were added to the treatment mix.
Telemedicine for mental health includes more than on-line sessions. In addition to the apps mentioned above, how about an Email or text on the smart phone to professionals for spot checks when a consumer feels off base. A few seconds spent with this technology could help bring a person into focus on recovery instead of relapse (there are security and confidentiality issues with this, so connect with a professional prior to moving ahead with this). Like a number of people, I think and process better either writing or by using pictures in a computer slide show. For folks like us, the solution of electronic communication with professionals can help us consider our thoughts and actions, and reflect on advice shared with us in past and in current communications.
The published account questioning effectiveness of telemedicine for mental health turned out to be rumor, anecdotal, without much support. I certainly support questioning effectiveness of any treatment in our industry, including the use of technological tools. This question, however, like Mark Twain’s famous quote, is the rumor of a death that’s greatly exaggerated.
Sheesh. I can get a kick out of sensationalism and exaggeration (I do that for fun sometimes), like most Americans (just watch the news to verify this), and the levels of that sort of thing has given me a healthy skepticism. I don’t believe everything I read. I’m glad to see there’s a growing interest in and value to telemedicine for behavioral health
Read more →Fact: data sits unused, and that’s a disservice to both consumers and business.
In a fast-paced, complex treatment environment, professionals seldom think of how data can help them treat a consumer…they’re busy treating the person for the primary problem they’re supposed to address. A customer of mine recently hit the six month mark of including new data into their Electronic Health Record (EHR).
Over the course of that six months, we integrated processes that are based on results backed up by data. I truly believe that without the data, our success would not have been perceived as something that contributes not only to organizational survival, but scratched the surface for improving treatment.
The clinic is an outpatient medication-assisted substance abuse program, dealing with chronic addicts.
Since addiction to another substance has been the focus for many years, alcoholism has taken a second-row seat in the clinic, when for some folks enrolled in the program, it’s been an alternative to using the preferred substance. There’s a related alcohol outpatient treatment program next door that makes it convenient to increase business for the overall organization. New York State OASAS includes a service chargeable to Medicaid for simply walking a consumer through an assessment to determine whether she may actually have a drinking problem. By including the assessment as a part of the clinic’s focus, consumers have been referred next door for treatment.
A few instances of success, helping consumers come to grips with their alcohol problem while showing staff the assessment can be successful in raising revenue and improving treatment, has been backed up by data. The assessment is a service that’s paid by the consumer’s payor, and a few have at least taken action over the data gathering period. The next step is to increase the staff’s efforts. Counselors and nurses have always informally invited consumers to investigate their alcohol use if they suspect it looks excessive, however referrals have seldom resulted in enrollments at the outpatient program next door. Since we have increased attention to the alcohol problem, the plan is to get staff buy-in to administer the assessments in addition to the consumer’s regular treatment sessions. By bringing more focused attention to the problem on a regular basis, we expect more success. Since we have data to back up the staff’s minor successes so far, we expect more consumer referrals once all suspected alcohol abusers are administered the assessment three times a year as is permitted (and paid for) by Medicaid.
Tracking the assessments in the EHR will deliver further opportunity for followup with the alcohol treatment program after the consumer’s initial treatment is complete and there’s even more data to review and judge effectiveness. The scheduling module in the EHR is designed to assure the follow-up activities actually happen. To date, the scheduling module has not been valuable for many functions, so it’s been neglected. Because the treatment in the clinic next door will certainly not be on the professional’s mind, a timely reminder to discuss the treatment with the consumer and the professional next door will help the two clinics collaborate, grow and become more effective. Needless to say, the organization sees benefit from the revenue generated by both the original and follow-up activities. Incidentally, this encourages another program designed to coordinate consumer treatment by a multiple providers, Health Homes. Health Homes are designed to keep all professionals providing complex care of different types appraised of the total treatment picture for a consumer. The design is meant to decrease emergency room visits and hospital stays for consumers with complicated multiple problems. In the case of today’s topics, the interventions and treatment discussed are all wrapped up in the EHR, so the data could be automatically sent to professionals who need it most in order to avoid drug interactions and generally know what’s happening in the consumer’s life…oh, and for my example clinics, that means more “Complex-Care” services, which can also generate more revenue.
As we progress into this new age of EHR effectiveness, data is king.
Read more →It was doomed from the start.
Long ago, but not so far away I researched Google Health . When I checked out the service, it seemed like a great place for my primary care provider and specialists in cardiology or mental health to electronically transfer the records. Demand drives services like this, and in the end, the demand just wasn’t there for Google’s service. Partly because the demand wasn’t there, partially because it takes programming effort for a software company to meet other software companies’ requirements to securely transfer data, the service didn’t make it.
It takes a special sort of programmer (aka expensive programmer) to develop secure data transfer technology, and security is the key concern when transferring health care data. Software companies are becoming less and less interested in doing this sort of work in the hopes it will pay off, simply because they’ve developed too many programs that didn’t. The Health Level 7 (HL7) format for transferring data is a good one, and really the standard that’s in use today. Most companies have developed this technology. It’s a matter of mapping data from an element in one program to the right spot in another program, say, like from your mental health or addictions professional’s office to Google. The problem is that every time it’s done, there are so many elements to account for in so many different ways, programmers commonly are re-inventing the wheel to get the right data from point A to point B in a secure fashion. It seems every software company approaches this common solution differently. That takes development, and as I shared, development is expensive. Professionals don’t want to spend the money, so data transfer programs, even those based on HL7, don’t get developed.
When I originally looked into Google’s service, I didn’t think the electronic sharing of data was even available, so I saw no value. If it was available, it still requires cooperation from other software companies, and getting competitors to cooperate is a tough and expensive task. If electronic data transfer isn’t available for a scheme like storing my health data in a third party location, then I would need to either do some scanning or manual data entry, and I wasn’t (and still am not) up to either. Besides, patient portals are on the horizon. Patient portals are one answer to a new government mandate that healthcare data, like mental health treatment plans, be available to the consumer. It’s much better than printing a book for every patient who wants a copy of their health record.
I use the Veteran’s Administration as my primary healthcare provider, as well as a few clinics, however my cardiologist is special…I go to an outside professional for that. In order to assure the VA’s system is up to date, I get scanned records from the cardiologist, and that’s almost too much work for me. Sometimes the scans just don’t make it to the VA. Shame on me.
By the way, my heart’s healthy and strong like steel, with apparently no danger of heart attack eminent in case you’re interested.
In our world, everybody’s concerned with confidentiality….I wouldn’t want notes from a private therapy session with a professional released to anybody, and that’s a common feeling. This prevailing attitude makes it awfully tough for third party services like Google Health to make it.
Read more →On June 21st, I published my comments on Facebook for business…I just didn’t know it had become so important to augment a business site with a Facebook presence. Now I know. Interestingly, the visits to my website jumped by fifty percent for the month. I believe that was simply because Facebook is so doggone popular and my blog came up in the search engines more.
I recently attended the NIATx conference in Boston, and H Westley Clark, Director of CSAT (http://www.samhsa.gov/about/csat.aspx) was a featured speaker. He mentioned in his address that one of the difficulties in delivering treatment documentation to consumers is that it may end up on Facebook. This brings up aspects of confidentiality that are important not only to the consumer, but also to the professional and even the organization they work for.
The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is becoming more and more expansive these days. In addition to the assessments, treatment plans and progress notes, you might see brain scans or even recordings of telemedicine sessions. I asked Jim Mountain, a vendor of telemedicine software, about recording sessions. He advised that it can certainly be done, however, would a professional want to do to that when there’s a danger it could end up on YouTube? All the systems I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a ton) have proven secure, and hackers are not likely to effectively plumb for health information, however, all health records are available to consumers, who might make a decision to share portions of the record on social media. If you’re a professional, consider how you’d feel if your notes were shared that way, or your sessions broadcast.
I believe the consumer’s health record is their property as much as the professionals and the organization they work for. It needs to be guarded, and is. A friend of mine manages a business that protects the consumer identity of methadone treatment recipients from the state…42 CFR prohibits even the state from knowing the identity of consumers they are paying for with Medicaid. The point of this is protection. It’s pretty good these days as long as records aren’t accessed on a lost laptop computer or published on Facebook or YouTube. I doubt it’s likely to happen, but it could. Perhaps an agreement between the consumer and the professional to keep the record that’s provided to the consumer confidential is in order.
This is a huge issue. A couple years ago, Duke FUQUA School of Business published their take on just how huge it is. And they’re not the only ones who’ve been debating, just search of the web on this subject, and you’ll find no shortage of opinions.
This is great food for thought about security, and while the consumer’s privacy is paramount in the business of mental health and substance abuse treatment, it seems to me that the professional’s privacy deserves some respect. And I think that’s the point, professionals spend a considerable amount of time and energy learning their craft, and the subtleties of what they do may be lost on a casual reader, followed by misconceptions that could affect the professional’s business or reputation.
I found these revelations fascinating comments on how our world is changing and Facebook is taking over the world. It will be interesting to watch this issue escalate.
Read more →I guess I just didn’t ask.
That’s a great sin in my business, and probably in my life, and I’m guilty. This publication is available on Facebook when you “friend” MentalHelp.net Click on the Facebook icon. I never saw the value and never thought to ask what it was, simply because the guys at MentalHelp.ne o a great job, and my site, www.mindhealthbiz.com receives a respectable number of monthly visits (thank you so much!). So, since things are so ducky and I’m always seeking more exposure, I’m asking now, “Why Facebook?”
Recently I stumbled on a reason: Facebook pages can receive more hits than my regular website. This is according to The Social Doctor. Who knew? Evidently my friends at MentalHelp.net did, and I never asked about it when I saw they’d started a presence on Facebook.
So, businesses have been creating business presences on Facebook for at least a couple years. In 2009, GIGACOM shared how to be effective with this level of marketing. What this means is that over the past two years, businesses have been leveraging this additional way to interact with customers, consumers, professionals and prospects and at the same time, register “hits” on the web, which equates to a more popular web presence, which is good. Hits look good to marketing types, interacting with customers pleases other corporate types who actually know that the customers, consumers and professionals counts, so Facebook for business makes sense on multiple levels.
Not to mention, it’s a nifty way for consumers to have a closer relationship with all my professional peers on MentalHelp.net.
Google has so many features that tell me about me, it’s almost scary. I’ve made my bed, though so I guess I’ll accept that…the problem comes in when that other Terry McLeod comes into the picture that has nothing to do with MindHealthBiz. These days the search engine seems to be doing a better job of weeding that guy out of searches for my site. Another feature is that cool magnifying glass to the left of the search item that pops up a view of the page associated with the link. But wait, there’s more…Google asks if you want to see more of the site, or similar to the site, or sub categories available on that site, like specific posts to a blog. All very cool. As a novice, it’s easy for me to ask “Where’s the linik to the Facebook pages in all those listings of me?” The first thing that comes to mind is that a respect for privacy stops that coverage for personal accounts, but what about business pages? Just because I can’t find them in Google doesn’t mean they’re not there. I just didn’t see them.
Although I had a long career in software manufacturing, developing some technical and software expertise, I still had to search “MentalHelpNet Facebook” to discover the link to that place. This tells me that the best way for my business to interact with folks on Facebook is through that little Facebook icon. I think this would take a while to build up any regular traffic to the Facebook business account. I must be missing something. It only makes sense that both the business website and the Facebook business account should come up in the search engine when I enter the business name.
Assuredly, this is a result of user error or neglect on my part.
So, the answer for MindHealthBiz and Terry McLeod is continued research to clear up too many questions about this technology. I will likely find the answers only by starting a business account on Facebook, for which there are directions.
Read more →The number one trend in my business, according to Healthcare Technology News will be the growth of Health Information Exchanges (HIE).
We’ve known the importance of electronic sharing of patient data for decades, and these days the hesitancy we felt in the past has become an obsolete emotion. With the advent of HIPAA and its embracement by forward moving legislation as well as new technologies, confidentiality is better assured than ever before.
In mental health and addictions treatment, there are a number of elements of patient data that can be shared that provide a number of benefits. Mistakes are fewer and efficiency is increased on the data entry side of recordkeeping. Treatment can be improved with a broader knowledge of the consumer’s healthcare events and who’s been treating them lately. Conceivably, when a billing address changes, the HIE could assure all professionals in the neighborhood treating the consumer have the most recent information. Professionals have dreamed of having access to few key types of data that multiple agencies treating a consumer might need in order to effectively treat the patient: • Current demographics • Diagnosis treated • Services rendered • Medications prescribed • Admission and Discharge summaries
Now, these elements are available through HIEs..
I am increasingly impacted by the success of HIEs When I was hospitalized a few years ago, and after discharge treated by a couple specialists within the hospital’s network of associates. I was very happy not to have to fill out so many pieces of paper, so somebody else could enter that data into the computer. It was already verified as correct while I was in the hospital, and immediately available to the specialists as soon as I’d signed a Release of Information (ROI).
This is the essential nature of other sorts of consumer data exchange networks, like a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO). There are many examples as this model is based on a local network of providers….there tend to be a bundle of different solutions where the need seems to support them, and that’s the case with sharing health information. Usually providers pay to become a member of the RHIO, and they will be able to see other local providers’ information like the elements listed above for a specific consumer. I share the opinion of some experts in the field that eventually all these networks will be joined together by the states, and ultimately the feds to finish creating the National Health Record that was mandated back in the Bush era.
I also agree with Adam Gale, president of KLAS, that with all that availability of data we should wonder what it’s being used for…Is the HIE matching patient addresses with their diagnosis in order to sell a list to a major anti-depressant manufacturer? It’s not likely, and that line of questioning is certainly valid for providers joining an HIE.
Conceivably, the value of the access to patient data should exceed the cost of belonging to an HIE. Will the government mandate for all patient care to be recorded in the EHR include the HIE? Testing the wind and laying out an opinion, I’d say it’s a great goal to have the consumer-authorized availability of information among providers, and for the most part that’s happening…it may take a few extra years get the EHRs connected, simply because the technology to make the secure connection, the mapping of the data from an existing EHR to the format needed by the HIE, and other technical concerns add up to a significant price tag.
Read more →Crime runs rampant! If a hacker has my health information, chances are high they can get yours, too. Frankly, if they have mine, I find that less disconcerting than somebody having access to my credit card and bank accounts. Perhaps if I were a senator or a member of the president’s cabinet, I might feel differently…as you may feel also. I may not care who knows I have three stents in my heart or that I have a history of being treated for anxiety. That senator or cabinet member, however, may have a very unpopular disorder and want that knowledge guarded zealously.
The idea behind hacking computers to get data is to turn it into money, and people are pulling down big bucks for sharing certain data with certain people! Apparently, holding data hostage is getting to be a popular pastime these days. I ran across a bundle of opinions about what the future holds recently in Healthcare Technology News for we who are interested in Electronic Medical Records (EHRs), and the article on healthcare hacking by Mark Kadrich set my imagination wandering. How can we improve security to healthcare systems?
In this industry, we need to make no mistake about it, consumers’ health information need to be secure, and it’s the professional’s responsibility to make sure security measures are in play…their tools are stringent password security and all that magic software that runs in the background to keep hackers out of systems. Electronic Health Record (EHR) software is currently regulated by some pretty stringent laws, and I’ve thought we had done pretty well in guarding healthcare data against hackers. HIPAA, data encryption, complicated schemes for patient Release of Information (ROI) and other measures combine into quite a net of security, right?
One hospital I worked with required me to negotiate three different security systems to get to the database I needed to work on. Even with all those levels in place, they recently suffered a virus attack that took a couple months to recover from. The good news is that from the recovery, they ended up with better EHR protection. It was, however, quite an expensive way to earn wisdom. A visit from a security expert and a system security tuneup might be a better solution. It pays to hire the professional, and a couple years ago a friend of mine graduated from a professional education program as an expert in system security; it’s a very specialized and valuable vocation…he got a job within weeks of graduating, and earns his tremendously increased salary
Healthcare Professionals are being encouraged to protect their consumers’ data with yet more security measures, even to the PC level and for SmartPhones. There are a ton of solutions out there. Without a careful analysis of your needs, what’s been effective and ineffective, which companies have a good track record of improving their products when a customer’s data is compromised, and a number of factors, who can say what’s best for you? The salesperson? Perhaps.
I am occasionally put in the uncomfortable position of recommending products and services like this, and frankly, I recoil as from a hot flame…there are plenty of security experts out there (like my friend), so I bring one of them into the equation. Technology changes by the minute, and I have enough work to do keeping tabs on EHR products and development. It’s like laundry…I hire a professional because if I handle it myself, I’m bound to end up with an irremovable stain.
Read more →