Integrated EHR pointing in the right direction

An integrated EHR or Electronic Health Record is an EHR which has the ability to interoperate across various applications and support information sharing/exchange with third parties. An EHR automates all the processes from patient treatment to billing, and bring increased efficiency to a provider’s office. Today’s EHRs are very advanced and have feature enriched capabilities. Many practices have been using basic EHR and billing systems since a long time and now need to upgrade or switch their EHR to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid meaningful use incentives. Migration to a new EHR is quite a challenging task because your old EHR holds all your data. The new EHR should have integration ability to work with your existing systems to enhance efficiency and workflow.

The top benefit of an integrated EHR is its ability to pull data from third parties such as labs, pharmacies, and insurance companies. A provider or practice using an integrated EHR does not need to fax or print any information. Integrated EHR users can send information to third parties from their systems and can also receive information such as lab results and insurance information right on their desktops. With an integrated EHR system, providers and practices can automate all their processes and enhance their workflow. The more resourceful processes are, the greater a practice’s chances are for qualifying for Medicare and Medicaid meaningful use incentives.

Fig. Integrated EHR perfection at its finest

EHR Usability: What is it?

EHR or Electronic Health Record is a major achievement of healthcare IT industry over the past few years. Whenever we hear about EHR, we hear providers talking about its usability. The promotional plan for EHR by Centre of Medicare and Medicaid is also based on EHR usability. Only those providers and practices are eligible for incentives who will demonstrate meaningful use of EHR. The question of the day is what exactly makes an EHR usable. Can we state an EHR usable if it supports e-prescription and lab connectivity or usability demands more?

EHR usability is quite a complex issue. It is really hard to define exact measures. However, we can say an EHR is usable if it adds to efficiency, is effective and satisfies the end user. The variations are always there. An EHR that may add to efficiency may not be effective. Similarly, different users have different satisfaction level. Another important factor is EHR safety. Does it care for data confidentiality and privacy? Office of National Coordinator (ONC) considers safety as a primary factor to measure EHR usability. ONC is still working on devising a policy to define EHR usability. Till the time a policy from ONC is debuted, we can consider efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction as prime factors of EHR usability.

Fig. EHR Usability

Accountable Care Organization: The Future of Healthcare System

Accountable Care Organization – An Essential Part of Healthcare System - Accountable care organization or ACO is a coordinated care system implemented to pursue improved patient care and reduced healthcare expenditure with the condition of accountability. It is like an organizational structure that ensures accountability with the approach of performance and payment evaluation. Under the legal entity of Medicare, ACO is the quickly growing trend. Providers and practices are moving to be part of ACO to provide coordinated and improved patient care and get paid through different payment models.

Medicare has released some rules that define eligibility of providers for ACOs. According to the rules, ACO can include:

• Providers and ACO professionals in group practice arrangements, who meet statuary requirements
• Networks of individual practices
• Hospitals employ ACO professionals
• Hospitals and practices joint ventures with ACO professionals

Medicare will reward those ACOs through shared saving programs who will demonstrate better patient care and low growth in health care expenditures while meeting the patient care standards. The participation in ACO is not compulsory by any mean. It is voluntary action of providers or practices. It is help of doctors in providing better patient care and reduces healthcare expenses. If they succeed in this, they will share the saving with Medicare. This is a major incentive for providers that encourage them to be part of ACO.

Fig. Accountable Care Organization - An Essential Part of Healthcare System

Introduction to Data Recovery

Data Recovery is not an easy task. Recovering critical data is a dedicated process that requires the right software, hardware and advanced methods in the hands of right recovery engineers. In order to save yourself from the problem of data lost, you must keep a backup of your important data. Backing up is the process of making and keeping copies of data at a desired destination, which may be used to restore the original in case of mishap of data loss. You should always keep multiple copies of files in data storage, so that if your original copy gets lost or damaged then you can easily get back your important file from backup

Data loss may occur due to various reasons:

Accidentally deletion of files and folders

Human error

Physical damage of hard drive

Virus attack

System failure

Data is stored in Hard disk, an essential part of a computer system, which is also called HDD, Disk Drive, Hard Drive etc. If your hard disk is damaged, you will lose your data and you are left with one choice, that is, to repair the hard drive by de-fragmenting the operating system. It is possible that due to de-fragmentation some files gets overwritten and your problem may get higher. So, you need to be very careful. Data recovery software is an incomparable option in such a case. Hard drive recovery software can be used to perform recovery of data from any type of failure of hard drive such as crashed, damaged, corrupted, deleted, formatted and many more complex failures.

Fig. Data Recovery

The experts of Hard drive data recovery will decide whether the problem is physical, logical or both. Physical problem occur in the hardware and logical problem occur on software configuration. Once it is decided that problem is physical then the accessibility of solution will be determined. If the hard drive data recovery experts obtain access to the drive, then they will create a sector by sector mirror image of the hard disk to their equipment where the process will continue. An assessment of the condition of the data structure will follow, as well as the identification of how much of the information is retrievable. When the hard drive data recovery assessment process is done, the results of the hard drive data recovery will be given.

Health and Wellness

In today's revolutionary world we have access to anything including health related secrets and strategies. Good health determines a balanced mind, body and soul and to endorse good health, you need to do healthy exercises along with a proper diet. A healthy life helps to achieve wellness which is the real wealth of life and wellness inspires you to lead an energetic life.

Good health is not a luxury but important for people everywhere to reach their life's potential. The secrets to health and wellness are simple e.g. good life style and wholesome diet choices, sufficient rest and exercise. Diet and lifestyle is a big contributor to health. A balanced diet and regular physical motion, along with restrictive smoking are important factors in the promotion of good health. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your health, but the two main things that you can start immediately, and that will make the largest impact on your health and well-being are:

• Nutrition
• Exercise

A simple way to improve health is by consuming natural, meat foods which contain dietary fibers, having numerous positive effects towards the human body. Healthy lifestyles must be adopted based on personal needs as blood circulation and respiratory system are greatly improved by regular exercises. The state of health and wellness is priceless yet it is available to rich and poor equally. Diet and lifestyle is a big contributor to health, support participants who wish to attain positive lifestyle. Examples of healthy, whole foods for a vegetarian's needs are whole grains, beans and legumes. Whole grains contain sufficient amount of carbohydrates needed by the body.

Health also involves stress management, since keeping your stress level controlled can give a positive and healthy boost to your health. Remember that overall health is composed of not just your physical health but even your emotional and psychological health as well. You can keep your stress level in check by doing different exercises. So, Take care of your health with natural diet, exercise, prevention, natural remedies, soothing sleep and other relaxation tools.

Personal Health Record - PHR

Personal Health Record or PHR is a simple way of collecting, tracking and sharing essential information about your health that is scattered across many different providers and facilities. Personal Health Record is a handy way for patients to keep track of their medical information. It is maintain by each individual person, making you responsible for informed decisions about your health. PHRs are especially useful to those who see different doctors and take numerous medications at one time because doctors may not aware of every medication that their patients take if they see different doctors.

It is vital for a doctor to know what medicine a patient is taking and what other health problems he has been facing before any emergency treatment.  According to the American Health Information Management Association, It is very important to keep a Personal Health Record (PHR) even when you are not in an emergency situation. Most of the time when you visit your doctor, you don’t remember to tell him about every nook and corner of your health history So it’s better to store all your detailed health record, including all information of medications, allergies, vaccinations, surgeries, lab results, family history etc.

Following are few benefits of having PHR:

• ·         Information to provide to new physicians
• ·         Ability to knowledgeably discuss your health with providers
• ·         Easy access to health information when you are travelling
• ·         Access to information when you cannot contact your doctor
• ·         Your own progress chart for health goals

Personal Health Records (PHR) help patients and doctors to converse and interact successfully. You will be amazed to know that over 1.5 million patients each year are hurt by taking the wrong medicine and it is believed that errors can be avoided if proper information is provided. But do not confound a personal health record with an electronic health record which are created and controlled by hospitals and doctors for their own use.

Now while visiting a doctor you do not have to collect or arrange your files and prescriptions and test results, you can electronically send information to the provider or take a copy with you. For those patients seeking high quality, accurate, affordable, efficient and cost-effective healthcare, Personal Health Records are likely to become more and more indispensable. PHRs provide capabilities to record relevant information and keep medical professionals informed.