Every decision you make about systems and production is a delicate balance between convenience and affordability. Spend more, and you might get more features. But if you max out the budget in one area, you might have to cut back in others. And that can mean you except a system that isn’t in your best interest.
It doesn’t seem plausible that a hacker would target Netflix in order to gain access to your EHR database, yet it might be more doable then you think.
It’s called credential stuffing, and it’s becoming a huge problem.
Hackers used to work long, hard hours, trying to break in one account at a time.
HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, was enacted in 1996 to improve healthcare coverage across the US. It was designed to:
Ensure employees retained health insurance as they moved between jobs
Made healthcare organizations more accountable for health data, to ensure it remains private and confidential
Help prevent fraud and abuse in healthcare delivery
Simplify the administration of healthcare
Of course, HIPAA wasn’t a cure-all.
Telehealth was growing rapidly prior to 2020. In 2019, the global telehealth market was valued at $45.5 billion. Now, because we’re all a little more digitally savvy and have an increasing demand for virtual meetings, that number is expected to rise to $175.5 billion by 2026.
In the middle of COVID-19, the Office of Civil Rights stated it would not penalize providers for noncompliance issues as they leveraged telehealth strategies during the pandemic.
Many companies are reinventing themselves in the middle of COVID-19. A custom framing company went into the business of producing face shields. Meals on Wheels has scaled its services by as much as 89 percent in a matter of weeks.
Anytime you change your business direction, you open yourself up to new security risks.
In the middle of a crisis, everybody pitches in and does what they can.
Non-medical companies like Tesla, General Motors, and Ford all have jumped in to leverage their manufacturing skills to produce medical supplies needed for fighting COVID-19. On the surface, that seems like a good thing.
There are many reasons why it pays to bring VoIP technology into your practice.
It can give you greater flexibility in how you operate
It can lower your costs
It can give you faster, more reliable communication
It can also give you a HIPAA violation.
A compliance program is designed to ensure your practice complies with all laws and regulations that apply to it.
If it’s an effective compliance program, you have someone in charge to ensure the organization is following the proper guidelines, to maintain safety and security.
What does work look like post-COVID-19?
Even before 2020, the office environment was changing. You could see patients anywhere you had internet access. You could update patient files from your phone just as easily as sitting behind the desk in your office.
You run a small practice. You haven’t thought about your phone system in years. It works. Why change something that isn’t broken, especially when there are so many other things to concern yourself with?
Yet now, you’re starting to question everything.