Why so many physicians finding themselves focused on software these days? Why government, payers and market forces are all pushing physicians to consider an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) strategy?
They are focussed on this software due the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA), which gives some mandatory guidelines on how patient data must be protected from unauthorized disclosure.
Bascially, the act says that whoever needs medical or insurance data to treat a patient or handle the billng is entitled to the information they need and no more. People not involved in the treatment of the patient are not entitled to medical information.
The software is necessary to provide safeguards against unauthorized disclosure, and to keep track of each disclosure. The law requires an auditable trail of disclosures, and the patient is entitled to such.
The law has a certain amount of teeth in it, as each unauthorized disclosure is a violation subject to a fine.
There have been a number of cases recently (and a lot of them in the longer past) where hospital or office workers got into the medical records of some personage of interest and obtained data that they were not entitled to. Some of this data made its way into the public realm. With the right software and system it is possible to prevent this type of disclosure and the subsequent liability.
EMR Software
Re: EMR Software
