To Text or Not To Text Patients? The Message from HIPAA.

 

Most of the 1.9 trillion texts Americans sent from their smartphones to friends and family last year wouldn’t be secure enough for healthcare settings. It’s unfortunate, because texting is a quick, easy and effective way to communicate.
It’s probably also no surprise that texting is the most popular smartphone feature, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey,  and 97% of Americans use their phones to text.
But like most other things, different rules apply in the healthcare world.
The HIPAA/HITECH privacy and security rules cover any communication with electronic protected health information (ePHI), including e-mail, social media and text messages. In an actual case, providers at a nursing facility requested nurses text them patient information. Even without evidence that an unauthorized person saw the messages, CMS intervened with a 10-point remediation plan to retrain staff, appoint a HIPAA security officer and revise their HIPAA policies and procedures.

Remember that texting leaves a record, unlike telephone calls. Plus it’s easier to know you’re reaching the correct person on the phone. The risk of texting sensitive patient information to another person is not zero – in public surveys, about one-third of people say they’ve mistakenly sent a text to the wrong person.
In addition, HIPAA/HITECH privacy violations can carry hefty fines, up to $50,000. So avoiding the temptation to text a colleague for a quick patient consult could save you money as well.

HIPAA Compliant Texting
Even so, the Joint Commission did not rule out all texting, according to Andrew A. Brooks, MD, orthopaedic surgeon and Chief Medical Officer at Tigertext, a secure mobile messaging firm.  In a piece for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, Dr. Brooks points out that minimum requirements for HIPAA compliance include:
* Secure data centers—Onsite or offsite (cloud) data centers must use a high level of physical security and policies to review controls and conduct ongoing risk assessments.
* Encryption—ePHI is encrypted both in transit and at rest.
* Recipient authentication—Confirmation that any communication containing ePHI only goes to its intended recipient.
* Audit controls—The ability to create and record an audit trail of all activity, including text messages containing ePHI.
The sheer volume of text messages indicates an overall preference for this form of communication. The 1.92 trillion texts last year is almost double the 1 trillion sent in 2008, so who knows how many texts Americans will send going forward.
Texting Appointment and Wellness Reminders
Your practice may already send patients text reminders for upcoming appointments. There’s evidence this strategy can reduce your patient no-show rate. HIPAA rules generally do not apply to communications without ePHI.
Text reminders also seem to help patients with medication, healthcare and lifestyle reminders. As examples, researchers show chronic disease text messaging can help patients manage their diabetes, remind African-Americans with high blood pressure to take their medication, and help people increase their exercise and physical activity levels, although some say more research on best practices is needed.
Healthcare vendors offer apps that promise secure texting and would allow physicians and medical professionals to communicate within a HIPAA-compliant platform. Verify information complies with HIPAA because government agencies do not vet many of these apps. Also, if you chose to use a third-party secure texting platform, keep in mind the three requirements for securing PHI: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Any platform chosen must satisfy all three elements, according to Mellette PC Healthcare Provider Attorneys in Virginia.
Another option, now that more than 80% of physicians use electronic health record systems, is to communicate with patients by sending e-mails through a secure patient portal. As you probably know, secure portals can help eligible providers meet Meaningful Use.
Whatever strategy you use, remind your staff to never transfer ePHI through non-secure methods of communication. And while we congratulate you on moving to the world of quick and convenient electronic communication with patients, here at Power Your Practice we also don’t want to see you financially penalized.
Figured out a great way to reach patients – and hear back from them – without violating HIPAA? Share your tips with colleagues below.

Damian McNamara

Damian McNamara is a Content Marketing Writer & Editor. He brings his journalism experience covering 18 medical specialties to cover practice management, cloud technology and health IT best practices to Power Your Practice readers.

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Solution

Payers begin to offer incentives for user's digital health data

Validic, Sponsored

Health plans are helping increase the value of digital health data for providers and patients

September 29, 2015

Health plans need digital health data. That is a given.

With such massive, diverse member populations, payers have realized they can no longer rely on simply averaging data from their independent information systems to affect cost and quality of care. They need a more personalized approach to help their members and have found a way to do so with provider-and patient-reported digital health data. By incorporating this data into a centralized repository, payers can analyze and use this information to create and improve their various member services. For example, in addition to supporting patient-specific care-management models, integrated data could enable the creation of wellness programs, preventive or disease-management care initiatives or even health-coaching programs. This personalized data can go beyond incentivizing and motivating healthy lifestyles; it can also help payers increase member engagement, a critical objective for many health plan providers.

Some obstacles that may have prevented payers from using digital health data in the past have recently been broken down. For example, some technology companies now offer a "one-to-many" cloud-based data-integration platform that enables providers and patients to input digital health data through disparate wearables, applications and devices. This enables payers to then access and analyze the data via a singular, integrated platform. Legislative changes have also helped break down barriers. For example, the benefits of using digital health data in healthcare are explicitly highlighted in the Affordable Care Act and in recent updates to Medicare reimbursement rules.

However, despite these advancements, health plans have realized that they also need providers and patients to buy-in for the information to be robust enough to be analyzed and used for improved patient care.

So, just as providers have been financially incentivized to use various technologies in their practice, payers now are monetarily rewarding them for integrating digital health data. For example, financial incentives, such as bonuses, preferred pricing and tiered models are common health-plan tactics to help drive providers toward incorporating digital health data into their practice. Further, payers also are offering financial rewards to providers for utilizing such technologies as high-speed networks and large data repositories, as these would enable ease of digital data collection and sharing.

Health plans can now collaborate with providers to incorporate patient information into a central source of aggregateclinical data, biometric data and other data.  Such information can be used to not only improve care and lower costs, but also to create health information exchanges, and offer further clinical analytics.

Health plans also are using financial incentives to attract their members to joining digital health data programs. The carrot approach for members includes offers of cash, gift cards, premium reductions or other merchandise for using various devices, applications or other programs to record their health data. Such financial incentives can encourage members to take ownership of their healthcare by engaging in digital health data programs.

And in return, health plans offer their members a consumer/member-friendly dashboard that contains more robustanalytics and insights into their general and specific health trends over time, predictive analysis and other programs in the hopes that they will continue to be engaged in their care -- and in using digital health data technologies.

About Validic:

Validic is the healthcare industry's leading digital health platform. Validic provides convenient and quick access to patient data from mobile health and in-home clinical devices, wearables and applications. By connecting its growing base of customers -- that includes providers, pharmaceutical companies, payers, wellness companies and health IT companies -- to the continuously expanding list of digital health technologies, Validic enables organizations to better coordinate care across their communities, improve their patient engagement strategies and more efficiently manage their patient populations.

Topics: Analytics, Clinical, Patient Engagement, Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Clinical

Healthcare Technology Vision 2015

That's according to a new Accenture report, Healthcare Technology Vision 2015, which lays out five key trends in the industry that show adaptation might be the best business model.

First, Accenture analysts are calling it the "platform revolution" – that is the ever-increasing ubiquity of mobile and cloud platforms that far surpass merely the ability to track in real-time a patient’s health. Rather, this is a platform that addresses interoperability, "that captures the data from disparate sources such as wearables, phones and glucometers, and pulls it all together to give a patient and caregiver a holistic and real-time view of the patient's health," they write.

[See also: Healthcare to enter 'third wave of digital'.]

The second trend, as the report emphasizes, is around the "outcome economy." In other words, "it's about delivering results." Hardware, nowadays, brings with it new intelligence. Better intelligence than ever before. And that's going to make patient data accessible with a mere click. It's going to give patients the convenience, and it’s ultimately going to lead to better outcomes, according to the report.

The third trend is around data, what's billed in the report as the "intelligent enterprise" – essentially a "data explosion" that will lead to tremendous clinical outcomes opportunities.

In fact, big data has gotten so big that some 41 percent of healthcare executives say the data volume their organization manages has increased by a whopping 50 percent just from a year ago.

Tomorrow, Accenture officials say, this trend will turn into an EMR including a "lifetime's worth of data"; it will be used regularly to predict ER visits. Consumers will be able to snap a photo of a skin rash and have a diagnosis shortly. Considering this trend, it may come as surprising that still only 28 percent of docs say they routinely use CPOE systems.

Coming it at No. 4 is the "Internet of me" trend – that is personalized medicine. And as more healthcare organizations invest in this technologies and system capabilities, they’re seeing positive results. In fact, an overwhelming 73 percent of health execs surveyed say they've seen ROI after investments in personalization technologies.

The last trend may make some feel a bit uneasy. And it's about the emergence of machines. It's the "workforce re-imagined." Think digital self-scheduling, sharing your own electronic medical record, training machines and connecting with physicians via social platforms.

According to Accenture data, 66 percent of health systems in the U.S. will have self-scheduling by the start of 2020. And nearly half of health execs strongly agree that within three years, they'll need to focus on training machines just as much as training employees. What does this mean exactly? Just think algorithms, machine learning and intelligent software.

"Patients can actually begin to care for themselves – relieve the burden of the delivery system and get a better result," says Kaveh Safavi, MD, global managing director of Accenture's healthcare business, in a video announcing the report. "That's truly workforce reimagined, because now you've made the patient part of their own care-giving team, and the technology makes it possible."

New Bedford Corp. finds way to automate data entry and save money

January, 08 2015

 

 

With the Open Enrollment Period for the National Healthcare Marketplace underway, healthcare services providers are preparing for the next wave of medical data stemming from millions more newly-covered Americans.

Medical billing companies and others bridge the gap between provider and payer, and are likely to see a steady rise in work volume as more people seek and receive paid care in 2015. Richmond, Virginia-based medical services provider, New Bedford Corporation, is one who employs the automation technology Foxtrot to cut the time and cost of handling patient billing information and save about $70,000 per year in overhead.Today the company uses Foxtrot software from Orlando, Florida-based EnableSoft to automatically perform this process. “The Affordable Care Act has created more claims and data to maintain for almost every healthcare services provider.” Explained EnableSoft CEO, Richard Milam. “Small and mid-sized organizations really feel the pinch because they likely cannot hire or outsource people to help. Automation technology is a digital employee – an extra pair of hands to help in these situations.”

Like many similar organizations, New Bedford employees review patient records, record, and manually enter data like patient name, location, and treatment into their proprietary billing software. Here, codes are assigned and the records are exported as a Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet. New Bedford’s previous process called for the exported data to be entered manually into their practice management platform, Intergy. At up to 30 seconds for each of up to 1,000 records daily, employees sometimes needed as many as 8 hours each day to load patient and billing data by hand.

“It was a manual process, but for us, it’s not simply about entering information.” explained Jonathan Ferrell, president of New Bedford. “Sometimes the patient’s demographic information does not exist in our database and we need to request it from the provider. Sometimes we receive duplicate charges, or tracking charges that shouldn’t be billed to insurance at all. There are decisions to be made along the way.” 

Foxtrot now automatically copies patient data from New Bedford’s proprietary billing system and enters it into Intergy at a rate of up to 6 records per minute – a 62 percent time savings versus manual entry – just as if a human were performing the actions themselves. Moreover, Foxtrot works overnight, so employees are free during working hours to build value in other ways. “We can commit more time to other activities like following up with insurance companies for payment. This results in even greater revenue collected on the back end.” says Ferrell.

New Bedford estimates that by automating what would otherwise require two full-time employees to accomplish, they save up to $70,000 per year in employment costs. “If a patient doesn’t exist in our system, we can automatically write an error log. If there is a tracking charge that shouldn’t be billed to insurance, for example, Foxtrot marks that charge accordingly in the system.” continued Ferrell. “Our software reacts when a problem is caught. We call that intelligent data entry.”

About New Bedford Corporation
New Bedford provides Practice Management, Billing, Coding, EMR Auditing, Provider Enrollment, and other services to healthcare providers throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. Their mission is to develop long-lasting business relationships with healthcare providers by developing high-quality back office services in ways that adhere to their core company values.

About EnableSoft
EnableSoft develops and markets Foxtrot; software that automates processes inside of Excel, websites, accounting software, and most other business applications. Over 500 organizations use Foxtrot to perform work that until today, would only be performed manually by human employees. These companies are able to better-allocate their human employees to customer service, sales, or product development while their Foxtrot “digital” employees handle the repetitive and routine business tasks of the organization. EnableSoft customers in financial services, healthcare, insurance, law, accounting, and elsewhere use Foxtrot to get more work done without adding headcount, outsourcing, or complex custom programs. Foxtrot handles processes as complex as legal research, and as routine as updating customer information, with speed and accuracy. EnableSoft was founded in 1995 and is based in Orlando, Florida.

Are you satisfied with your EHR?

Related: 6 Things I Wish Somebody Had Told Me When I Started My Small Business - 5

                                                                                           5. Sustainable competitive advantage

Every solution has competitors and alternatives, or it has no market. Thus, it needs an advantage to rise above the crowd, such as a patent and trademarks, unique market positioning or support from industry partners. Too many competitors or a product with minimal differentiation makes a startup risky.                                 

Related: 6 Things I Wish Somebody Had Told Me When I Started My Small Business -3

3. A focus on a specific market segment

As a startup founder, you won’t have the marketing resources or brand recognition to appeal to all consumers. Instead, find and quantify the specific demographics of the subset that your solution best fits, and target all your features and messaging to those customers. Targeting multiple segments almost always weakens your business.

BILLING SOFTWARE OR CLOUDS

This type of buyer...	Should evaluate these systems
Integrated suite buyers	Allscripts, MedLedger, CareTracker, SuiteMed
Inpatient care providers	Inpatient care providers Sage Intergy, athenaCollector, NextGen
Outpatient care providers	AllegianceMD, LeonardoMD, AdvancedMD
Cash-based providers	MDConnection, MediTouch
Outsourced services	Practice Admin, AdvancedMD, NueMD

Here are some highlights to look for in a premium health care clearinghouse:

– Eligibility Verification – Determine patient portion before appointment
– Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA) – Automatically updates Payments & Adjustments
– Claim Status Reports – Know the status of a claim at all times
– Rejection Analysis – Have error codes explained in plain English
– Online Access – Edit and correct claims day or night online
– Printed Claims – Have claims automatically dropped to paper when necessary but still be able to track and manage them online.
– Patient Statement Services – Have your patient statements put on ‘autopilot’ at a cost less than what you can mail them out yourself.
– Real-time Support – The best clearing houses offer 1-on-1 personal support and training provided by experienced billers.
– Affordability – When you take into consideration the cost of purchasing forms, the cost of printing, envelopes, postage, and time spent; a clearinghouse ends up costing far less than processing paper claims, plus electronically you have the many added benefits.