Posted by Jay Vance on Mar 2, 2009 in
General HIM Insider: Medical transcription providers should be educating themselves on how the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus bill, is changing the way HIPAA regulations will apply to business associates. Up to this point, business associates of covered entities were not directly liable under HIPAA for breaches of private health information (PHI). As a result of HITECH, however, business associates, including transcription providers, will now be directly liable for failure to adhere to HIPAA regulations regarding the use of PHI.
Tags: business associate, covered entity, hipaa, HITECH, medical transcription
Posted by Jay Vance on Feb 23, 2009 in
General HealthNewsDigest: The HITECH Act now directly obligates business associates to comply with the HIPAA Security Rule’s administrative, physical and technical safeguard requirements, including developing and implementing comprehensive written security policies and procedures with respect to the protected health information (PHI) that they handle. Failure by business associates to abide by such requirements can result in CMPs being assessed directly against them.
Tags: breach, business associate, hipaa, PHI
Posted by Jay Vance on Feb 23, 2009 in
General http://tinkylink.com/ReDictation
As all long-time transcriptionists know, years of high-level production transcription inevitably take a toll on the fingers and wrists. What many MTs may not know, however, is that modern consumer speech recognition technology (SRT) offers a possible alternative to all that keyboarding. I call this option “re-dictation,” which is the process of using a front-end speech recognition (SR) application such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or Windows Speech Recognition to “re-dictate” transcripts rather than type them on a keyboard. It takes some getting used to, but I’ve personally found it to be a useful alternative when I want to give my hands a rest.
Tags: Dragon, speech recognition, transcription, voice recognition
Posted by Jay Vance on Feb 19, 2009 in
General nextgov.com: The Social Security Administration will begin using the nationwide health information network on Feb. 28, making it the first agency to test the government’s approach to interoperable electronic health records.
MedVirginia, a regional health information organization, has agreed to let SSA officials retrieve the electronic medical records of disability benefit applicants in the Richmond, Va., area, said Debbie Somers, a senior adviser in the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Systems at SSA. This will reduce the processing time for disability claims dramatically, she said on Wednesday during the 2009 Federal Networks conference in McLean, Va.
The typical disability claim takes 80 to 90 days to process, according to Somers. “Most of that time is spent waiting for medical records,” she said. “In our pilot program [with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston] it took less than a minute to retrieve records, with no human interaction on their end.”
Somers added that with 3 million people relying on SSA to retrieve their medical records annually, she is delighted that the agency will be the first to use the nationwide health information network.
Tags: EHR, health information technology
Posted by Jay Vance on Feb 19, 2009 in
General timesunion.com: Records of more than 1,000 patient visits to Northeast Orthopaedics, a large Albany surgical practice on Everett Road, have been posted on the Internet, a violation of patient privacy laws.
Alan Okun, practice administrator, said the North Carolina company that transcribes dictation for the doctors had a security lapse. The problem was discovered earlier this week and the company, MRecord, removed the records, he said.
However, as of Wednesday evening, Google’s archiving system had kept copies that could still be discovered by a 70-year-old retired legal secretary like Fisk, and anyone else.
Tags: hipaa, privacy, transcription
Posted by Jay Vance on Feb 12, 2009 in
General WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — During a routine internal inspection, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) discovered a contractor providing medical transcription services who was not following the Department’s rules for protecting medical information.
Although there is no evidence that any patient information was disclosed as a result of the violation, VA has suspended the contractor from receiving any sensitive information from the Department until the contractor guarantees compliance with VA’s standards for information technology (IT) security.
“VA insists that contractors, as well as our own personnel, adhere to the highest standards for protecting personal information,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “When we detect a problem, as happened in this case, we will quickly fix it, and we will ensure such problems are not happening elsewhere.”
The issue involves a contractor whose employees create written transcripts of recordings made by health care professionals while performing physical examinations, reporting on surgeries, and taking patients’ histories. VA officials found the contractor’s employees used computers that do not adhere to government policy on security.
Based on this incident, the Secretary has launched an intensive examination of all VA’s contracts to ensure all contractors properly safeguard information about VA patients, Veterans and employees.
Posted by Jay Vance on Jan 19, 2009 in
General HIM Insider Blog: The XY Files
Posted by Jay Vance on Jan 19, 2009 in
General Kansas.com is reporting the opening of a new training program for medical transcription, Advanced Medical Transcription Education Course (www.studymt.net). According to the news article, the new school is an offshoot of MTS of Kansas, a transcription service company which has served medical care providers in Wichita and nationally since 1989. Donna Hill, owner of MTS, and Donella Aubuchon will head up the MT school.
According to the AMTEC website, tuition for the program ranges from $3500 to $4000, plus a $100 administrative fee.
Tags: medical transcription, MT, school, training
Posted by Jay Vance on Nov 14, 2008 in
General You can now purchase and immediately download Microsoft software applications from the new Microsoft Online Store. With broadband Internet becoming more and more available, and with folks driving less, this is a shrewd move on Microsoft’s part, and I predict the service will be extremely popular.
Tags: download, Microsoft, software
