Message from
Senior Management
Teddy, Caroline and Healthcare IT
Joel Berman
President
Capture Technology
Senior Management
Teddy, Caroline and Healthcare
IT
Joel Berman, President
The news over the last few weeks, at least here in Boston, has been concerned primarily with the death and funeral of Senator Edward Kennedy. The senior senator from Massachusetts was a man who was part of a large family with great wealth and great power. Teddy could have spent most of his career in the shadow of his brothers, at home on Cape Cod or out sailing. Instead he spent the last 47 years working toward the goals that he thought were worth achieving. Whether you agree with his goals or not, you have to admire his efforts. Caroline Kennedy, his niece and President Kennedy’s daughter, said "Now Teddy has become a part of history and we are the ones who will have to do all the things he would have done, for us, for each other and for our country." What message is there in all of this for us?
Kennedy supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which includes $19 billion for healthcare IT. The idea behind the healthcare IT portion of ARRA is actually pretty simple. Its goal is to encourage greater use of healthcare technology because the belief is that this will improve patient care, reduce medical errors and save money. I think it’s fair to say that most of us in healthcare IT believe this to be true. As one example, our MobiLab solution has reduced phlebotomy labeling errors to near zero according to many of our clients. What troubles me, however, is that if we believe in what we preach, then why aren’t we leading the efforts for adoption of IT rather than following along behind the politicians? We are the experts but others lead. The lesson we need to learn from Senator Kennedy and Caroline is to become an active participant in the process to achieve our goals. The question is how.
Our healthcare IT community is made up of MEDITECH, MEDITECH users and the commercial members who provide services and products to MEDITECH users. MUSE is the organization we naturally look to for leadership in our community even though MEDITECH does not participate in MUSE. MUSE organizes meetings and facilitates discussion and education, but restricts its area of concern exclusively to items that affect the usage of MEDITECH software. Over the past few years, I’ve tried to get MUSE to see that it should, in my opinion, do more. It should serve the users of MEDITECH software. There’s a big difference between the two.
Can MUSE help lead in the goal to achieve greater use of healthcare IT within our community? In our MEDITECH community we have as much experience as any other group – maybe even more. We have CIOs, IT directors, analysts, programmers and a vast community of commercial members who can help. Can we all work together to increase CPOE usage, bedside medication verification and other safety measures whether MEDITECH provides the solution or not? We all know that sharing clinical information between different systems is a tough problem. Can we work together to share patient information between MEDITECH systems? These problems should be easier to solve. Let’s show the world what we can do! Or should we just go sailing and let it be someone else’s problem?
On August 19, the Department of Health and Human Services issued the final breach notification rule that requires hospitals to notify patients of unauthorized use of their Protected Health Information within 60 days of discovery. Hospital administrators are justifiably concerned; as privacy breaches exposed outside of their organizations harm their reputation.
While legal teams prepare for the implementation of breach notification, we believe that the first step in the breach notification process is to avoid the breach.
We work with more than 150 hospitals and health systems to enhance their
patient privacy monitoring. With our
Security Audit Manager
software, hospitals are able to:
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Decrease the frequency and severity of internal security breaches
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Proactively monitor and identify common security violations for all patients
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Reduce
staffing resources committed to privacy monitoring
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Document, track and report on incidents
We invite you to join us for a complimentary webcast to learn how Security Audit Manager can help you reduce the frequency of security breaches, save your staff time and comply with the new breach notification rule.
To register, select a webcast date below and follow the registration instructions.
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Webcast Date |
Day |
Time |
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Thursday |
2:00pm Eastern |
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Tuesday |
11:00am Eastern |
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Wednesday |
2:00pm Eastern |
If you have questions, please contact Pamela Brock at Pamela.Brock@iatric.com.
The average patient at most hospitals is asked to sign a minimum of three documents during registration. Signed documents are then copied, given to the patient and distributed to various departments throughout the hospital. The entire process can be time-consuming and labor intensive, with little control over confidentiality and security.
IatriSIGN enables hospitals to capture patients’ signatures digitally, via electronic pen pad. Once signed, the system allows appropriate users throughout the hospital to view documents. Staff no longer need to copy or scan signed documents, thereby streamlining processes and reducing workload. Digital signatures are kept confidential and secure with this solution.
Join us for a live demonstration online and at no charge. Simply select a webcast date below and follow the registration instructions.
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Webcast Date |
Day |
Time |
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Wednesday |
2:00pm Eastern |
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Thursday |
2:00pm Eastern |
If you have questions, please contact Pamela Brock at Pamela.Brock@iatric.com.
Inc. magazine has published the annual 2009 Top 5000 list, recognizing privately held U.S. companies who demonstrate outstanding growth over a three year period. We achieved over 119 percent growth from 2005 to 2008, ranking the nationally at 2,506, up from our 2008 ranking of 2,602. We also improved our standing from 95th to 86th in the top 100 businesses within the “Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH” region.
“Iatric Systems is honored to be recognized for the second consecutive year by Inc. magazine as one of the country’s fastest growing private companies and one of the top 100 businesses in Boston metropolitan area,” said Joel Berman, founder and president of Iatric Systems. "It all stems from the basics; understanding the issues our customers are facing in today's challenging healthcare IT environment, providing the right products to meet those challenges and most importantly staff members who view providing superior customer service as our mission."
Inc. magazine’s September issue is on the stands now. Visit www.inc.com/inc5000 for the complete Inc. 5000 national list and top 100 businesses in the “Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH” region.
Kay Jackson, Marketing Manager - Financial
Are you prepared for post audit appeals?
Recovery Audit Contractors (RAC) and Medicaid Integrity Contractors (MIC) are clearly hot topics in the healthcare industry today. While hospitals have been preparing for the onslaught of these pending audits, commercial payers have been quietly busy. Many top insurance companies have either hired or plan to hire one of the four RAC companies to perform post payment commercial audits. In fact, I recently learned that Health Data Insights (HDI) has several contracts with commercial payers. While the RACs and MICs have published regulations to follow, what rules will these contractors apply for commercial payers? Does your contact with your commercial payers have any protective language regarding post payment audits? Be prepared for these audits to be very aggressive – and determine what recourse your hospital will pursue for appeal.
Remember that Iatric Systems’ audit tracking tool, IatriTRAC, can track all Medicare audit types such as Comprehensive Error Rate Testing (CERT), Medicare Appeals Council (MAC) and RAC. RAC also offers an option to track MIC and commercial audits. For more details on the MIC audits, attend our 30 minute Education Session on September 23, 2009 at 2:00 pm EST to help you plan for success with the MIC audit program. If you would like more information about tracking RAC audits, attend our one hour session on October 14 , 2009 at 2:00 pm EST.
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Webcast Date |
Webcast |
Day |
Time |
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MIC Powercast |
Wednesday |
2:00pm Eastern |
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| 10-14-2009 | IatriTRAC | Wednesday | 2:00pm Eastern |
To register to attend, select one of the dates above and follow the instructions.
For more information, please contact us at
info@iatric.com.
Sending SMTP (real email) from an NPR Report (MAGIC)
Many MAGIC and C/S Report writers know that the MIS.OA.MSG.auto program can be used to send a MOX message (MAGIC) or an Email Message (C/S) from a report. Rather than use a dictionary based message, you build the text on the fly in the report and pass it to the program, along with a list of user mnemonics or printers. For more details, check out the February 2006 tip on our website, where we show how to have a report send a "Hey I'm Done" message, including the title, internal name, spool file number, and the run time of the report:
http://www.iatric.com/_docs/updates-feb2006.pdf
It is also possible for the MAGIC platform to enter an email address in the user dictionary to divert all MOX messages to an email account. If you need to send internet email to a particular recipient, you can create a fake user in your MIS.USER dictionary, and enter an email address in the "Mail Address" field on the MOX page.
What if you want to send internet email without setting up a fake user?
For example, to send information to vendors using the email address you filed in the vendor dictionary, you could create a fake user for each vendor
and copy the email address from the vendor dictionary to each of the fake
users, but that is a lot of extra work.
Fortunately, MEDITECH has a set of SMTP programs that can be used to send a email message to any email address. Using these programs will allow you to send to any email address, without needing to set up a fake user in the MIS.USER dictionary.
Important Note: Your MEDITECH system and network must be configured to allow remote mail. You should test this by sending remote mail from MOX to an email address inside and outside your domain. If MOX cannot send remote mail, you will need to set up mail server information in the "Manage Open Systems" menu in OPS, and possibly also configure your mail server to allow the MEDITECH machines to send email outside your domain.
The programs you use to send an SMTP message (simple mail transfer protocol) are:
MIS.SMTP.OUT.send.file <== sets up your file and returns a urn to pass to the next program
MIS.SMTP.OUT.add.rec <== checks recipient
MIS.SMTP.OUT.done <== sends message
Here is how to call these programs from a report to send an email message:
You could build your own message and use the utility from another report as follows:
Note that the sender of the message will be the email address of the user running the report, for example:
If you want a different sender email address you can change the information in the user dictionary:
An example MAGIC report has been placed in our report library: MIS.zcus.is.eupdate.email
http://www.iatric.com/information/npr-library-search.asp
You can find additional NPR Tips on our website at http://www.iatric.com/information/npr-tips.asp, as well as information about our on-site NPR Report Writer Training and NPR Report Writing Services.
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If you received this newsletter via email, you may give us feedback by simply replying to the email. However, if you would like to reach someone directly, please feel free to contact one of the individuals listed below.
Joel Berman, President,
Joel.Berman@iatric.com,
978-805-4101
John Danahey, VP, Sales & Marketing,
John.Danahey@iatric.com,
978-805-4153
27 Great Pond Drive, Boxford, MA 01921, USA
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