"Building Better Businesses...With Technology"

Technology News You Can Use

February 2010

In This Newsletter

Comments from the Editor
Economic Stimulus Package
Do Certifications Help You?
Protecting Yourself on Facebook
Enterprise Content Management
Contact Us
Archived Tech Newsletters
Technology Resource Guide

Comments from the Editor

Welcome to the February 2010 issue of the North Chamber’s Technology News You Can Use newsletter. This month we have another four articles that are both timely and worth a read. Continuing with our theme of electronic document management from the January issue, we have a couple of great articles adding on to that idea. David Chionsini, Inetware Technology, starts us off with information on the implications of new electronic medical records laws scheduled to go into effect by 2015. Marcia Custodia, Modis, has a great piece on the certifications necessary for compliance with Department of Defense Directive 8570.1. Dave Gallant, Gallant CSI, presents an excellent discussion on Facebook privacy issues. Finally, we conclude with Bryan Guinn, Prism Technologies Group, and Enterprise Content Management. As always, many thanks to our contributors and if you have any feedback, comments or story ideas, please send us a note. We'd love to hear from you!

Tod Bruning, M.S.

Rackspace Grant Project

Alamo Colleges

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Economic Stimulus package and EHR Incentive David Chionsini, Inetware Technology LLC

Did you know that our government is tackling a new project? It’s the electronic health record (EHR)! The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that President Barack Obama signed in February 2009 sets aside approximately $19.2 billion in incentive payments to physicians and hospitals that adopt EHRs. By the way, if you haven’t heard of an EHR you may know it by it’s other name, the electronic medical record (EMR). Bottom line is that lawmakers foresee a national network of EHRs as a method to enhance the quality of care and considerably reduce Medicare and Medicaid costs.

The selection and implementation of an EHR is not for the faint of heart. Physician practices and hospitals may not have the skill set or staff to successfully guide them through each facet of the project. To that end, practices will most likely need to work with consultants and vendors to complete the project successfully.

More on the Stimulus Bill

The opportunity provided to qualifying physicians is significant. Basically, the Stimulus Bill provides that qualified physicians who utilize a certified EHR in a “meaningful” way will receive incentive payments through additional reimbursement via either Medicare or Medicaid, depending upon the individual physician’s payor mix. Incentive payments ranging from a maximum of $ 44,000 under the Medicare incentive option or $ 64,000 under the Medicaid option are available to each qualifying physician, regardless of group practice size. The payments are made over a five year period beginning in 2011.

Physician Eligibility for Incentive Payments

Physicians who do not accept Medicare or those who do not have a patient payor mix of greater than 30% Medicaid (20% for pediatricians) will not qualify for the HITECH incentive payments. Furthermore, physicians operating solely in a hospital environment, such as pathologist, anesthesiologist, or emergency physicians are not eligible.

Penalties

Beginning in 2015, physicians not demonstrating meaningful use of an EHR will face penalties in the form of reductions to their Medicare fees schedule reimbursement rates. The penalty will equal 1% in 2015, 2% in 2016, and 3% in 2017 and each subsequent year. Under the bill, the Secretary can increase the penalty to 5% if fewer than 75% of eligible physicians are not utilizing an EHR by 2018.

When to Start

If a physician has not already started the process of implementing a system, the time to start the process is now. The transition to a new EHR system can be a timely process, especially with the added requirements of meeting the meaningful use criteria for the incentive payments. Typically, the time requirement of a successful EHR implementation increases in proportion to the size of the group.

Due to the fact that only 20% - 30% of the market has already implemented an EHR system and that many EHR vendors had waiting lists prior to the stimulus act, it will be a challenge for the industry to handle the implementation of the non-early adopters in a timely fashion. Those physician who wait, may have little chance of qualifying as an early adopter.

What’s Next

You may be wondering “what are some of the next steps that need to take place” once a physician decides to start an EHR project. Well, the practice will need to perform a requirements study to find vendor solutions that best fit the practices needs. Once the study is complete, the Request for Proposal (RFP) will need to be created and sent to various vendors for their responses. This provides a side-by-side comparison of products. Practices will need to coordinate with the vendors specific dates, times, locations, and attendees all for the purpose of product demonstrations. Demonstrations will usually be held after office hours and off site. Reference checking will need to be performed as well as potential site visits to see the product used in a live setting. A finalist will be selected, contract negotiations and signing will take place, and then the implementation planning begins. Finally, the practice will need to demonstrate meaningful use of the EHR in order to receive incentive payment.

Advice to Vendors

There will be those practices that will attempt to manage the entire process on their own. However, the steps involved in such a significant project may give others reason to pause and consider outside assistance. Make sure that your methodology is sound to guide them through the process. Make sure that you get as much buy in as possible and, make sure you have someone to champion the project.

Advice to Physicians

If you are a physician and you treat Medicare or Medicaid patients and you are considering moving to an EHR, don’t wait. Further, don’t leave money on the table. It’s important that you remember that the longer you wait, the more difficult it is going to be to get the attention of a vendor. As time goes by, more and more vendors will become booked up pushing you further back on the list.

Finally, you’re investing a large sum of money into an EHR system that you want to be successful. Find an expert who can work with you to minimize the negative impact to your practice and set you up for success.

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Do Certifications Help You? Marcia Custodio, Modis

As technology advances, so do the needs and expectations of employers. There used to be a time when just having the “right” experience was enough to get the job offer but now a days with the increasing threat of IT security breaches these expectations have been steadily raising over the last few years. One of the more recent pushes has come straight from the Department of Defense in a directive called “8570”. What this policy mandates, which was released in 2005, is that all full and part-time employees, contractors, and foreign-nation personnel must acquire a certain “baseline” certification specific to the role they are in by the end of this year.

This creates an interesting change of events, especially for those IT professionals living in San Antonio . Time and time again, I have seen people with the right skills and experience but without the required certification not be able to apply for a vast majority of the positions that make up the fabric of San Antonio, the military/government aka the DoD (Department of Defense). Certifications, such as a select few within the CompTIA, Microsoft and ISACA series, are becoming a “MUST” in this job market and no longer a “ PLUS ”. If your career track is anywhere along the lines of Help Desk, Network and/or Information Assurance, you need to have certain certifications to even be considered for submittal.

Yes, most of these certifications are not cheap, to say the least, but the ROI (Return on Investment) in today’s job market is undeniable and more so if you live right here in San Antonio, headquarters for the largest military establishment in the United States. Mastering today’s job market takes strategy, so the more tools you have in your arsenal i.e. certifications the more attractive you will be to a potential employer. For more detailed information on what the DoD requires, check out the following link: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/857001m.pdf

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Protecting Yourself on Facebook, Dave Gallant, Gallant Computer Investigative Services

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past year, you likely know that Facebook has become the most popular social networking site in the history of the Internet. There are over 350 million registered users around the world, and over 700,000 local businesses have Facebook accounts as well. I am an avid Facebook user myself, and like approximately 50% of the other users, I log on to my account everyday to "update my status," post pictures of family members, and see what is going on in the lives of others. I have been able to reconnect with family and friends whom I have not seen or heard from in years, and I also promote my business on it. But with all that in mind, let's not forget there are folks on Facebook who may not actually be your "Friend" and want to take advantage of all the information you provide.

Hackers and identity thieves LOVE Facebook because unsuspecting users willingly provide them with valuable intelligence they can use against them. For instance, during the account creation process, users are required to provide their full birthday, and by default, if they choose to display it, it is displayed in full. If folks are married or in a relationship with another Facebook user, they can link to that user. Now the identity thief or hacker has your spouse's name as well as any information they can glean from their profiles. Users can also link to other family members and the thieves can get information from them as well. So now, a would-be identity thief has your name, likely where you live, and date of birth, family member names, as well as other personal information you have posted. Unfortunately, most cases of identity theft occur among family members, and Facebook provides another way of them gaining information to use against you. Does all this mean you should all run out and close your accounts? Absolutely not. However, here are a few basic tips you can use to help protect yourself.

1. When you set up your Facebook account, use an email address from one of the free sites (Gmail, Yahoo!, etc). Don't use your primary email address that you use for banking or any other financial site. If you have already set up your account with your primary email address, you can change it in the account settings area.

2. NEVER display your entire birth date. If you want to get those birthday wishes (and who doesn't), simply display the month and day. Remind your family and friends to not display theirs as well.

3. Use the Facebook privacy settings to restrict who you allow to see your profile information. Do not set it so "everyone" can see your information. The best practice would be to limit your public profile information to only the minimum data required to allow your TRUE family and friends to find you by choosing the "Friends" or "Friends of Friends" settings.

4. Don't become friends with just anyone. If you don't know them, don't accept their friendship request. If in doubt, make them prove you know each other via email BEFORE you accept their friend request.

5. Always use a strong password and change it frequently - every 90 days or so. For advice on how to create a strong password that is easy to remember, check out my website at http://www.WhatsOnTheComputer.com/SecurityTips/SecurityTips/password_security.html.

Facebook is a powerful tool to reconnect and stay connected to family and friends, but all that unprotected information in the hands of a criminal can have catastrophic ramifications. I will continue to use it, but always with an eye towards protecting myself and family, and you should as well.

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Enterprise Content Management, Bryan Guinn, Prism Technologies Group

What is ECM?

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists.

Content at Work

It's not enough to "manage" content. Of course, the ability to access the correct version of a document or record is important, but companies must go further. Content must be managed so that it is used to achieve business goals. Central to this strategy are the tools and technologies of ECM, which manage the complete lifecycle of content, birth to death. There are four primary areas in which content, and ECM, is fundamental to the success of your organization: Compliance, Collaboration, Continuity, and Cost.

While there are ECM technologies, more importantly, ECM is an ongoing and evolving strategy for maximizing how your content is to be used. Technology can enable streamlined management of content, but the underlying strategy must come first.

Compliance

The key to a successful compliance strategy is integrating the idea of compliance success into your business-not viewing compliance as a project that can be completed and then considered "finished." To help limit the risk and cost, proactive ECM strategies must be developed within key areas, such as records management and business process management. The tools of ECM, properly used, can help reduce the overall cost of compliance to the business.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the art of working together. With today's collaborative tools, business units and teams can work together anytime-whether in adjoining offices or a world apart. The technology can now address operational objectives like saving time, streamlining processes, cutting costs, and improving time to market. When using collaborative tools, you must be aware of records management, knowledge capture, and compliance requirements. For some organizations, all customer communications must be kept. And, for a collaborative product design process, organizations must be sure that the results are kept as business records.

Cost

While ECM can be a costly initiative, what are the costs of not properly managing your content? The cost of not implementing ECM tools is too often left unmeasured until too late. ECM tools can make your organization more efficient and drive down the cost of doing business. These technologies provide value to your organization by more efficiently organizing information for its subsequent retrieval, use, and, ultimately, disposition. Plus, as these tools are used by more organizations, it becomes part of how you work. What's the ROI on a telephone? Yet, you wouldn't think of doing business without one, would you?

Continuity

Keeping a business going 24x7 is the task of business continuity planning. While often mentioned with disaster recovery, business continuity planning is the overall strategy for ensuring that operations continue in the event of any disruption-natural or man-made. Disaster recovery is narrowly focused on getting an organization's IT infrastructure going again, a subset of business continuity. Because the lifeblood of most businesses today is represented by electronic documents, ECM has a key role to play in continuity. Effectively delivering on a continuity plan will enhance your ability not only to recover during a system failure but will enable you to better define the priority of your business content and improve your overall ECM strategy.

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