The Connection, Inc Blog

The medical field has spawned all kinds of new technology that takes patient care to the next level. Regulations demand that even smaller practices need to make the jump to electronic medical record systems (also known as electronic health records). These EMR/EHR solutions provide an interface that give providers and patients a way to keep themselves connected to each other--a tool to promote a more efficient delivery method for these services. We’ll take a look at these EMR and EHR solutions that are hosted in the cloud, giving your organization more information to make an educated choice on implementing this software.

There is no denying there is a standing partnership between IT and Healthcare. With costs inflating at a nearly-uncontrollable rate the healthcare industry has started to lean on IT to try and make the delivery of care more efficient. Today, we’ll take a look at healthcare IT, and how the industry is working to use innovative new technologies such as machine learning to provide operational efficiency resulting in better care.

Many industries depend on their IT working properly to function as intended, and healthcare is among them. Prior to 2009, information technology had failed to take root, but with the passing of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), the health industry is much more involved and reliant on IT than it has ever been before.

Improvements in technology have allowed us to come a long way since the days of our ancestors, which is made exceptionally clear by our developments in the realm of healthcare. There are so many ways that healthcare providers can use information technology to their advantage, so we’ll cover a select few here.

Technologies That Help Improve Medical Care

Electronic Medical Records

The typical person will pretty rapidly build up a pretty considerable medical file, provided they are going to the doctor on a regular basis. Naturally, this is even more the case for individuals with chronic conditions or who fall ill more often than average. It is important that their physicians are able to reference this file as they plan for each patient’s care, to ensure that their strategy doesn’t interfere with a past decision.

Electronic medical records make this information easier to store and access, enabling doctors more data to work with as they provide their care. Secure platforms keep the private matters hidden from unauthorized viewing, while making it easier for a patient and a physician to stay informed. 

3D Printing

While certainly not something one might have expected to find in this list, 3D printing has proven to have true benefits to healthcare. Crafting prosthetics and other customized materials has become far more precise than it once was, making outcomes far more effective for patients. This has actually led to other advances in medicine, allowing doctors to now craft replacement organs, tissues, and skin for patients in need.

Robot-Assisted Surgery

Many surgeons are renowned for the stillness of their hands as they operate, but as a human being, there are going to be limits to what they can do by hand. That’s why devices have been developed that can give them a much better view and more precise tools to work with as they command a robot that can get into places with less trauma and scarring to the patient. This combination of a physician’s talent with the unerring precision of a machine has created a much better way of performing surgeries and other complex procedures.

Looking to Implement More IT into Your Healthcare Practice?

We’re here to help. Reach out to the experts here at The Connection, Inc to learn more by calling (732) 291-5938.

The professional services space is filled with important information. Lawyers, accountants, doctors, and many more professionals have access to some of the very most personal information available. For this reason, they are continuously targeted by hackers. Since October is cybersecurity awareness month, we thought we would take a look at modern cybersecurity practices to see which ones were working best for professional services firms. 

Compliance laws regarding the storage and dispersion of healthcare records were implemented with the intended purpose of urging healthcare providers to better take care of their patients’ personal information, but how effective are they? Unfortunately, there are many providers that have failed to meet the standards for the HIPAA and HITECH compliance laws, and it has brought a hefty price tag along with it.

In 2016, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Department of Health investigated several data breaches that led to a considerable sum being claimed in response to violations of these compliance laws. In what totaled to 12 settlements following the investigations of data breaches caused by failure to comply with these laws, as well as one monetary civil penalty, these claims amounted to approximately $25,505,300 in fines.

Compare this to the more recent data. In 2017, there were only nine HIPAA settlements that produced a total of $19,393,000, as well as a single monetary civil penalty paid, a considerably smaller sum than the previous year. Clearly something is working here, but what is it? Perhaps it’s the fear that being negligent with important data could mean a large sum raining down on the heads of those who fail to adhere to these laws.

What’s even more interesting are the types of violations that led to these penalties. While the majority of these involve a failure to protect protected health information, or PHI, and its digital counterpart electronic protected health information (ePHI), there are a couple of outliers that are interesting to look at. Here are some of them:

• Insufficient ePHI access control
• Impermissible disclosure of ePHI
• Careless handling of PHI
• Multiple HIPAA violations
• Delayed breach notifications
• Lack of security management process
• Lack of a business associate agreement

The majority of the issues revolving around HIPAA and HITECH compliance come from an inability to secure mobile devices, failure to implement proper security processes, and delaying breach notifications for far too long.

As for HITECH specifically, a recent lawsuit was filed in federal court against 60 hospitals over alleged failure to adhere to the HITECH Act. Specifically, these hospitals failed to adequately provide records and documentation for 50% of their patients within three business days of the request. This is one of the specific requirements for securing funding through the HITECH Act, so you can understand that this was quite a big red flag for government.

Consequently, these 60 hospitals from the state of Indiana now face charges totaling over $1 billion for failure to provide records as required, despite receiving the incentive payments totaling around $324 million. Additionally, these hospitals face claims that they violated the Anti-Kickback Statute and the False Claims Act for claiming that they were HITECH-compliant, when in reality they failed to meet the requirements of the regulation.

Not all practices fail to adhere to HIPAA and HITECH, though. Is your practice one of them? Answer with confidence today by reaching out to The Connection, Inc at (732) 291-5938.