As physicians, we know that seconds really do make a difference in patient care, but the legal line can easily be blurred between providing the fastest emergency communication and keeping protected health information secure. There is no question mobile apps can make a difference in helping doctors speed up communication around diagnosis and treatment plans […]
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Answering Service HIPAA-Compliant?
As doctors, we are constantly looking for ways to work more efficiently without compromising patient care. One way we do this is to increasingly rely on our mobile devices, but we have to be careful we don’t accidentally violate HIPAA/HITECH privacy and security rules. Here’s a potential trap physicians may fall into. Receiving text messages […]
Report a lost or stolen device with ePHI
Physicians have a lot to lose if they don’t take the time to get up to speed on how to comply with the latest HIPAA/HITECH privacy and security rules. Here’s a violation physicians may not even be aware of, but that could cost them. Not reporting a lost or stolen device that contains PHI. Losing […]
Be Careful When Sharing your Phone
Our job as physicians has an infamous reputation for blurring lines between our work and personal lives. This blurred line carries over to patient security and can potentially be a big deal because of HIPAA/HITECH security regulations. Here’s an example of a rule you may not even know you are breaking. Allowing your child to […]
Snapping Pictures of Patients – Legal?
The recent final rule of the HITECH Act outlines that even if the physician is unaware of the violation, they may be fined a civil penalty of $100 – $50,000 per violation. It is time for even the most resistant doctors to pay attention to how they handle protected health information (PHI). Here’s a scenario […]
Dangers of unsecure texting
Doctors do not plan ahead to violate HIPAA, but in this digital age, they may be doing it because they did not plan ahead. Here is a common way physicians are breaking HIPAA/HITECH privacy and security rules, and may not even know it. Texting PHI to members of your care team. It’s a simple scenario: […]
Austin Leads The Top 12 American Boomtowns
Bloomberg Rankings sorted through U.S. Census data for metropolitan areas to rank those with the greatest population growth, then scored areas on growth in gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation. Combine the two scores and winnow the list to regions with more than 1 million residents, and you have American’s fastest-growing cities. The Austin area […]
Getting started with DocbookMD: An orientation
We recently expanded our user base at DocbookMD, and found ourselves teaching the basics to hundreds of new doctors and medical society executives around the country. What became quickly apparent was the fact that while DocbookMD is very simple to use, the best features are not always obvious until you have used them once. What […]
mHealth: A new era in medicine
Mobile Healthcare, or mHealth, is quickly becoming mainstream in the medical community. Physicians are increasingly reporting that they do not feel comfortable with growing patient workloads in this time of ever-changing healthcare delivery. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as doctors have more consulting physicians to collaborate with, higher complexity of diseases to manage, and […]
