Almost two months passed between my post last week and the last one before that. The combination of family illnesses followed by vacation and recovery from travel put me in a position of being so far behind in the reading I usually do that I could not possibly catch up. My personal inclination was to [...]
The HITECH section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) added privacy and security requirements that providers of health care services must follow in handling the Protected Health Information (PHI) of those they treat over and above those provided for in HIPAA. HIPAA allowed PHI to be exchanged for treatment and operations without patient [...]
Spring has finally arrived in central Florida. It has become warm enough not to need to wear cool weather clothing but cool enough to keep windows and doors open for most of the day. This is the time of year when I want to be outdoors even though the air is full of pollens. I experience a [...]
On March 2, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced a plan to approve organizations to certify electronic health record software programs. ModernHealthcare.com reported the announcement of this new plan by ONC head, Dr. David Blumenthal, at the big meeting of the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) occurring in Atlanta [...]
I am on my way back from two and a half days in Phoenix where approximately 40 SATVA (Software and Technology Vendor Association) member representatives, EMR users, and industry IT experts met to find a way for behavioral healthcare providers to exchange patient information using the electronic Continuity of Care Document (CCD). The CCD is [...]
Last week, Seth and I attended the semi-annual member meeting of the Software and Technology Vendor Association (SATVA), the behavioral health software and technology trade association to which SOS belongs. At one time, SOS, like many other companies moved along based more on the spoken needs of our customers rather than on long-term projections about [...]
During the past two weeks, I have spent several hours creating process diagrams or flow charts for a customer. After using our billing software and a custom attendance/reporting module we created for them in 2003 but maintaining paper clinical records, they are now implementing a custom Forms module and preparing to implement our behavioral health electronic [...]
Most every week I have a call from my credit card company’s security department to see if the recent activity on our account is actually ours. We used to get these calls maybe a couple of times a year, but now it is literally weekly. A while back our credit card processor for SOS transactions [...]
I try to keep informed about Electronic Medical records (EMRs), certification of those products, and funding for them provided through the economic stimulus bill (ARRA). After all, as a developer and vendor of a behavioral health EMR, I really should know some of this stuff. This week, I was struck by the number of acronyms that have come into common [...]
The deaths of the past week have set me to thinking. The mother of a friend passed away early in the week followed by the wife of a family friend. Then, news of the death of cultural icon, Michael Jackson, was everywhere. I come from a family and culture (New Orleans-based) where death is an intrinsic part of [...]
