Does HIPAA compliance really mean cyber-security ? Ask Ed Snowden.
The following video explains the added burden for programmers and software developers who previously used cloud based data bases and/or programs.
HIPAA compiance has a great deal to do with user compliance and fulfillment of HHS mandates as well as ‘civil rights’ in regard to privacy.
It does not guarrantee data is safe or secure.
Next Week’s Health IT Webinars:
Learning Lunch Webinar: Strategies to Educate Patients on Electronic Access of their Health Information
ICD-10 Plug in to Knowledge Monthly Webinar Series – Plan, Organize, and Assess
Learning Lunch Webinar: Medicare/Medicaid Update – Reporting on Clinical Quality Measures
The Platform for Data Liquidity: Meeting the New Requirements for Interoperability
National Provider Call: Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs and Certified EHR Technology
These upcoming health IT events are being put on by the Regional Extension Centers. If you are a provider in their area you are invited to register.
Washington & Idaho REC – PQRS: The Payment Adjustments are Coming. Is your Practice Ready?
When: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 11:30 am – Pacific Daylight Time
Registration is required
Unravel the complexities of the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) program in this webinar. If you’re seeing Medicare Part B fee for service patients and don’t have a PQRS submission plan, this webinar will give you several tips and tricks on how best to submit data to the CMS program.
Massachusetts Medicaid EHR Incentive Payment Program Webinar Series – Registration and Attestation
When: June 26, 2013, 12 PM – 1 PM ET
Register required
The Massachusetts eHealth Institute, the Commonwealth’s leading Health IT resource, will be hosting learning webinars throughout 2013 to provide healthcare organizations, providers, and their staff with comprehensive, actionable information on Health IT adoption and optimization.
Don’t forget to mark your calendars for these educational webinars.
Physicians are familiar with ‘disruptive technology’ ( I coined the term “catalytic innovation) as electronic medical records were introduced into office and clinic practice. The disruption caused decreases in efficiency and required altered work flow.
The introduction of Clinical Information Systems has an identical effect on patient care in hospitals. Training and satisfaction must be assured for the staff well before ‘going live’. There are many instances where staff have felt inadequate to the point where they have argued patient safety is involved.
And here is an example:
Affinity Medical Center registered nurses are asking hospital officials to delay a new electronic health record system set to begin this weekend.
The nurses, who would be the primary users of the Cerner electronic health record (EHR) system, cited inadequate training and short staffing.
Affinity registered nurses, who are represented by the National Nurses Organizing Committee in Ohio, an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU), documented their concerns in a letter to hospital officials Friday. They said they tried to deliver it by hand along with a second letter demanding to negotiate a contract with the union. The letters were not accepted.
“This is serious,” said Michelle Mahon, a representative based in Cleveland for NNU. “The nurses are concerned about patient safety.”
Mahon said she emailed and faxed the demand to bargain to hospital officials and also emailed the letter of concern to the chief nursing officer and received no response.
Susan Koosh, vice president of marketing and community relations at Affinity, said the use of EHRs will increase quality and safety at Affinity, and significant training opportunities and extra staff and trainers have been added for the transition.
“We are very excited about implementation of our new electronic health record, which will go live this weekend,” Koosh said in an email. “We have thoughtfully prepared for this conversion for months, involving our clinicians in the process, providing significant training opportunities and adding extra staff to the schedule to help ensure a smooth transition.”
PATIENT SAFETY
The system has the potential of violating the Ohio Nursing Practice Act because it doesn’t permit nurses to communicate individualized, potentially life-saving information about their patients, the union said in a statement.
Other concerns include placement of workstations, which require nurses to turn their backs to patients while they document. Also, during one education session, the system apparently crashed once because 17 users overloaded it, according to the union.
“The National Nurses Organizing Committee’s press release contains inaccurate and offensive statements,” Koosh said.
“To suggest that Affinity has not provided sufficient training or adequate staffing — or that we would ever put patients at risk — is blatantly false and irresponsible. Our computer system is built with safeguards to ensure continuous operations, while the external training site does not have such protections.”
Cerner guidelines call for 16 hours of training for each nurse and nearly 95 percent of nurses have met this requirement, Koosh said. Affinity has established six computer labs with more than 75 stations, and the hospital also is accommodating extra training for clinicians who feel they need additional practice on the system.
Some of these concerns involve union interference with implementation based upon other factors, such as low staffing ratios which may have already existed prior to HER installation, and other non-related conflicts about bargaining powers
The NNOC represents about 225 registered nurses at Affinity, which is part of Tennessee-based Community Health Systems, and continues to refuse to bargain a first contract. The National Labor Relations Board held a five-day hearing in May in Cleveland for a complaint filed by the nurses and NNOC. A decision by an NLRB administrative law judge is pending.
If the planned new system is launched this weekend, the union will file an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB, Mahon said. Also, registered nurses will begin using Technology Despite Objection forms to document their concerns, as well as verbally notify management each time they fill them out, Mahon said. Nurses also will speak with elected officials and community groups about their concerns, she said.
The disagreement and conflict are patient safety issues which should have been addressed long before the system goes active. The medical staff should play a major role in the decision making. The scope of the issue goes way beyond the competency of a National Labor Relations Board and seems to be an inappropriate use of Labor law.
With the Alme natural language platform from Next IT, you can provide the personalized service of a concierge while delivering the business benefits of a technology-based self-service solution.
Alme is a multi-modal, multi-channel, multi-language platform designed to revolutionize customer service by creating intelligent virtual assistants capable of understanding what your customers actually mean. Alme uses this knowledge in unprecedented ways to deliver information and perform tasks, giving your customers an experience that’s all about them.
Talk, tap or type—Next IT virtual assistants are ready with the right answer, providing an integrated approach proven to boost customer satisfaction, user engagement and revenue.
Natural Language Processing has appeared in the business world. Much more powerful that a voice tree selection it offers a form of artificial intelligence able to understand selective questions and answers verbally. Mobile health and smartphone users are familiar with Apple’s Sirius, and Google Voice recognition.
Many companies have their own proprietary system specialized in their niche.
With Alme’s processing power,combining voice recognition and NL P (natural language processing) Your staff for customer service, requests, and patient needs is multiplied and amplified many times.
By 2015, Gartner predicts that half of online customer self-service search activities will be via virtual assistant – that's just two years away. Companies will have a fire hose of patients coming at them – the smartest will know how to control and use it.
Every health facility and virtually every function within a company, wants better insight and greater confidence in understanding patient or provider needs, behavior, and preference. Which investments will give the greatest lift? Which processes or product improvements will create users that are loyal for life? Which touchpoints are triggers to grow share of market and yield increased efficiency and market share?
Virtual Health Assistants Poised to Revolutionize Healthcare Delivery - See more at: Technology continues to advance at such an incredible pace that it can be hard for many industries to keep up with the ways in which new systems and processes can help them be more effective. In this morning’s session, “Your Next Provider Will Be an Avatar,” presenter Thomas Morrow, MD, explained why it’s necessary for the healthcare industry to not only keep pace with technological innovations, but also to integrate these technologies into several aspects of care. - See more
The next revolutionary disruptive technology that needs to transform medicine, according to Dr Morrow, is the Virtual Health Assistant (VHA). The VHA is a technology that is not only needed, but inevitable. There needs to be a sophisticated technology that is capable of cutting down on the high cost of medical care. Dramatic physician shortages—which are poised to only worsen—and the constant explosion of information that cannot be handled because of natural cognitive limitations are leading to less time for patients in the examination room. To prove this point, Dr Morrow mentioned that primary care physicians (PCPs), on average, take on 28% more patients than they are able to handle. Even worse, patients typically have only 27 seconds to explain their symptoms before being interrupted by their physician. Dr Morrow added a personal anecdote related to this statistic, telling the audience about how a patient he had been speaking to was having chest problems and went to see several doctors without having any improvement. The patient had been interrupted and misdiagnosed each time until Dr Morrow had actually stopped to listen to all of his symptoms and told him to ask his next doctor about potentially having an aneurysm, which turned out to be the case. The patient was admitted later that day. -
This may be one of those disruptive technologies that operate at the strategic level.
Here are some of the additional ways in which VHAs will be able to transform the healthcare system:
