Industries that need virtual desktops

Apart from the cloud, one of today’s biggest IT trends is virtualization. And why not, it has helped countless businesses in more ways than one. An emerging model of virtualization is virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which involves hosting a desktop operating system and making it available on almost any device. It is most effective in […]

Healthcare: Prevent insider threats

Healthcare is the only industry where insider threats pose the greatest threat to sensitive data, with 58 percent of security incidents coming from people working within the organization itself. Here’s a look at five ways to prevent such breaches. #1 Educate – The workforce (meaning all healthcare employees) must be educated on allowable uses and […]

HIPAA Requires Careful Social Media Posting

Healthcare providers that use Social Media can interact with their patients, advertise new services, and quickly communicate urgent announcements or messages. There’s immense potential for it to improve care, but also to expose patient-specific information. On April 14, 2003, the “Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act” (HIPAA) became law with the goal of protecting the […]

New Year…New Computer Security Bug…Y2K10!!

Symantec revealed the existence of a bug in their products. The problem is that updated files released and time stamped after 11:59 PM on 12/31/2009 are treated  as out of date by the endpoint security product. Symantec has a workaround, but weren’t we supposed to have learned our lesson ten years ago?  This bug is not putting a large number of customers at risk today.  Symantec is simply dating all new definition files 12/31/2009 and giving them new version numbers so users stay up to date. Symantec says they are working on a permanent solution to the problem. Amazing as it is, others are also suddenly finding year 2010 bugs in their software.  Both SpamAssassin and Windows Mobile cell phones are having issues with messages being suddenly marked as from the future — it is likely they are not the only ones. I guess we did not learn our lessons in Y2K!

What’s all the fuss about EMR (Electronic Medical Records)?

A hidden cost of medical care is in the lack of communication between care providers.  This can result in duplication of tests and unnecessary fragmentation of the patients care.  EMRs solve these and more issues confronting health care today. In some cases the patient received treatment or even hospitalization without the knowledge or involvement of the primary care provider or the support team.  Even patients who are referred to a specialist by the primary care provider often return to the primary’s office without results or documentation of the outcome of the visit to a specialist. Communication is, of course, a two-way street and patients need to take the initiative to ask for their records when seeing a specialist.  Never assume that this is happening.  In addition, patients should review their own records annually to be certain everything there is up to date, inclusive, and accurate. The Government is emphasizing EMR systems as a means to end these problems and create communication between care providers at the speed of light.  While it will take time for EMRs to be pervasive, the first milestone is upon us.  Medical practices can qualify for up to $44,000 per physician in government funding to adopt EMRs.  The condition is that an approved system must be installed in 2010 and in substantial use by the practitioners.  Failure to meet these criteria will reduce the care provider’s compensation by $18,000 per provider in the practice and it continues to reduce each successive year. Care providers need to start now to select and implement their EMRs with the help of a skilled, experienced, and local computer service provider.  This need not cost huge amounts of investment nor change your practice, if it is selected and implemented in a professional manner.  Practices do not need to change their care processes or flow.  With a simple and direct five stage approach, care providers can have the technology enabling their work to improve patient encounters and make their life much better…AND, the government will pay for it.  Why wait? Patients need to be alert to care providers using paper charts and ask the care provider when they plan to have an EMR in place.  Everyone benefits and the cost of waiting or doing nothing is too great. Additional information is available by clicking here:  http://www.beckitsystems.com/medical_er.php