|
2014 In Detail...
New Patient Portal / Secure E-Mail
System
As mentioned in former newsletters, Patient
Engagement is one of the hottest topics in HealthCare today. New
companies are popping up across across the
country with interesting and innovative ways to connect healthcare
providers with patients. The most popular method by far is still
email. The issue with regular email accounts (gmail,
etc.) is that they are not secure, so you are very limited in what can
be communicated. With our new HIPAA-Compliant Secure E-Mail
system (powered by Updox), TheraManager
clinicians can now communicate freely with their patients/clients via
email. Protected Health Information (PHI) may be emailed
freely. In addition, you may send your patients/clients forms to
fill out and send back to you. We'll be implementing more and
more features as we go; we are big fans of increasing Patient
Engagement. Our Secure E-Mail system also meets the new US
Government "Direct Messaging" standards, so you may also
email PHI to clinicians in other practices that have secure email
systems.
New EMR Screen
We've officially launched our new EMR
screen. Our development team wrote the new screen in Microsoft's
.net technology, so it has an easy-to-use graphical user interface and
it's easy for us to maintain. The two most important new features
are 1) the ability to turn any Microsoft Word document into an EMR
template and 2) the integration of Digital Signature Pads. The
ability to convert MS Word documents into EMR templates expands the
uses of our EMR to include any Patient/Client paperwork - treatment
plans, progress notes, confidentiality agreements, etc. The
integration of Digital Signature Pads is a huge time-saver for
Practices that run government programs and require
Client/Patient/Guardian signatures. Imagine avoiding the tedium
and potential errors in 1) Printing the document; 2) Having all parties
sign the document; 3) Scanning the signed document; 4) Inserting the
document into TheraManager. Instead, simply direct each party to
sign on the pad, and watch the corresponding signature appear
simultaneously onscreen. Presto, you're done!"
To date, we've deployed our new EMR
screen in all new 2014 clients and with long-time TheraManager clients
that had not yet started using EMR functionality. We're currently
developing an upgrade strategy for the thousands of TheraManager users
around the country that heavily use the original EMR screen.
Please note that the original screen will continue to be supported, so
although this is a free upgrade covered by your maintenance, it is not
a mandatory upgrade. The new EMR screen looks and feels very
different, so for those practices that have developed custom templates
and forms over the years and are quite happy with the current screen,
we will work with you to consider
which screen
best meets your particular needs. More to follow...
Protected Health Information (PHI)
Along with Patient Engagement, PHI is
one of the hottest topics in Health Care. One of our long-time
TheraManager Practice owners invited us to co-present with him on this
topic at the recent Texas Psychological Association trade show.
To summarize what you need to know in two points:
a) Completely remove PHI from your
practice. Shred the papers. Purge the memory
sticks,
computer hard drives, and tape backups. Have your employees sign
papers
confirming that they have done the same with anything
they may have ever taken
home.
Get rid of it all and document that you got rid of it all.
b) Where should it go? A
HIPAA-Compliant Cloud. Not just a cloud --> a HIPAA-
Compliant Cloud. What's the difference?
HIPAA-Compliant data centers meet incredible standards around data
encryption, fire, flood, and theft protection, data backups and
redundancy, etc. See our past newsletters detailing more specific
answers to this question or contact us for a quick discussion.
We searched the major US DataCenters in 2013 to ensure that TheraManager
clients were in the safest possible environment. We took the
decision to substantially increase our costs so that you and we could
have peace of mind. The single largest reason it's important for
you to be in a HIPAA-Compliant cloud is to de-risk your practice.
In the event your practice ever undergoes a government audit, you'll
want to be able to show the auditors that your PHI is safely in a
HIPAA-Compliant encrypted communications cloud. You will not want
to be in the position to say that 'my nephew setup our office server
and he knows all about computers.' :)
eRx
When we attended the 2014 American Psychiatric
Association tradeshow, the most frequent question, by far, asked by the
scores of Psychiatrists that visited our booth was 'does your software
allow me to e-prescribe controlled substances?' Paper scripts are
apparently going the way of 8-Track tapes and VCR's. Almost every
state in the US now allows eRx for Schedule
II - V drugs and effective March 27, 2015, in NY, it will become
illegal to write paper scripts any more. Why this rapid and
widespread change? Two main reasons - improving accuracy and decreasing
fraudulent Rx's.
It took a lot of work, but
TheraManager is now certified with DrFirst
and Surescripts, so that our prescribers may
send Controlled Substance scripts electronically to pharmacies. At the
upcoming 2015 APA Tradeshow, our answer will now be a resounding 'yes,
of course', when we are asked the same question as last year:)
If you'd like to see the e-prescribing rules in your
state, just review this link:
DrFirst
Map of the US for eRx of Controlled
Substances
|
