September 23, 2013 marked the end of the relaxation or grace period for the tougher, stricter implementation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) Omnibus Rule. The Rule, which was enforced earlier in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), gave practices across the country the new guidelines to Read more…
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Reasons why physicians hesitate in switching to Electronic Healthcare Systems
The day I sold my green 1998 Buick Century to settle a college loan and instead bought a run-down beat old Geo Metro, which was a stick, by the way, my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces and within each piece there were a million more tiny pieces. I was devastated beyond consolation. It Read more…
What to consider prior to switching to EHRs?
When medical practices switch to Electronic Health Records (EHRs), the transition is never easy and can be quite cumbersome for many. It can make the practices suffer in their day-to-day operations and they can easily lose their primary focus: patient care. Not only it can take months to implement the system, it requires extensive training Read more…
Reliability: EHRs or Paper?
Twenty Years ago, there was no concept of electronic health records. Doctors used paper-based systems and spent countless hours, filling out hundreds of thousands of papers every year. Consequently, they had less time, then they do now, to actually focus on the patient. Then, there was a revolution; A revolution of computers, of information technology Read more…
Ideal Healthcare: A fantasy or a Realistic Goal?
In 1999, when Jack Kevorkian, a doctor of medicine, was imprisoned for life for having medically assisted with 130 suicides in his professional career, not only did he get branded with the alias of Dr. Death, but it also opened a Pandora’s box of questions about how far the boundaries of medicine could be stretched. Read more…