OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Just a week ago, Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, GA became the latest victim of a major data breach involving protected health information (PHI). The health network announced it was unable to locate 10 computer discs containing PHI for more than 300,000 patients treated between 1990 and 2007.

According to a local news article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Emory President and CEO John Fox admitted that the discs had not been properly stored. Although they were in an office with restricted access and nightly lockdown, the cabinet they were in was not locked.

We can hope that the discs were simply misplaced rather than stolen or destroyed, but incidents like this still occur far too often in the healthcare industry. At risk is not only the privacy of the patients whose health information could now be anywhere, but also Emory itself, because it is bound by strict regulatory mandates like HIPAA and HITECH. Non-compliance can result in crippling fines and a loss of public confidence. Emory has already committed to providing identity theft resources to all of the affected patients.

This latest breach comes just six months after an internal breach in which an employee perhaps unwittingly printed medical records that eventually found their way to an identity theft ring. Nine of 32 affected patients reported that their identities had been stolen, and Emory alerted another 7,200 patients who had been in their care at the time. All told, industry analysts calculate the average cost per breached document at $240. Though the employee was let go, Emory spokesperson Lance Skelly said the printed documents were within the scope of the employee’s job duties. In other words, the paper was the problem. To see how OpenText helps medical facilities of all sizes tackle this issue, watch last month’s webcast with TMCnet.

While many healthcare providers are making great strides in effectively managing today’s patient information, how many of them are effectively evaluating the risk associated with “misplacing” historic documents that fall outside the scope of their EMR deployment? For many organizations, it’s unlikely that their next data breach will result from a virus or a group of teenage hackers. The real threat may simply come from the theft of unattended paper documents or an overzealous cleaner diligently “cleaning up.”

OpenText has a solution designed for problems exactly like this. Alchemy, our document server solution, can capture document images from paper or just about any electronic file format, file them or route them to specific users, and track every instance of access: where, when, and who sees them. Had the files on those discs or the leaked paper medical records been scanned into Alchemy, the physical media could have been safely destroyed and Emory would be in the clear.

Click here to check out Alchemy’s latest release, version 9.0.

The complex and dynamic healthcare IT marketplace was on full display at HIMSS12 in Las Vegas last month. After spending a few days interacting with partners, customers and healthcare IT consumers as a representative of OpenText’s Fax and Document Distribution Group (FDDG), three main trends stood out to me that I feel are important to share with those unable to attend, whether health professionals with IT problems or vendors with IT solutions.

The Cloud
Despite early fears that managing and exchanging sensitive documents like patient information in the cloud would be too unstable or vulnerable, the sentiment is shifting as businesses across all industries become better informed – and consequently more comfortable – with the emerging medium.

Quite a few healthcare IT vendors have done a commendable job of demonstrating that cloud computing can be secure. Although many hospitals and other healthcare providers are realizing they need to step outside of traditional technologies in general, their initial hesitation to embrace cloud is understandable. Many of these institutions have spent a lot of time and money building an IT infrastructure that, while perhaps not as efficient or up-to-date as they would like, makes them feel confident that their sensitive documents are safe. It was great to see more hospitals getting out of their comfort zones and investigating new technologies.

Mobility
To some people, a PDA or other mobile device is simply a phone, a scheduling tool, or even just a neat gadget. But to a growing number of healthcare professionals, these mobile devices have become critical to managing and sharing documents, and, more importantly, delivering quality care.

The continually expanding capabilities and security of mobile devices are making them more and more attractive to healthcare professionals, especially those that need to share sensitive information quickly and without being tied to a desk or a fixed appliance.

HL7 Messaging
Health Level-7 (HL7) messaging is beginning to generate a lot of renewed attention. Originally developed in the U.S. more than 20 years ago as a standard for healthcare information systems, it was quickly adopted by many other nations and remains an important way of managing healthcare information in a unified manner.

Security and compliance has become one of the most daunting challenges for healthcare providers, but their need to communicate quickly and often internationally is growing as well. HL7 is being revisited as a cornerstone for sharing medical records and other health documents.

With these and many other changing trends in mind, our healthcare IT solutions must keep pace. OpenText FDDG will continue to develop document interchange technologies that meet the needs of the Healthcare industry.  Fax remains important, and even as electronic interchange of records grows in Healthcare, fax will still be a backstop.  OpenText continues to put a major focus on secure operability in the cloud, access to critical documents via mobile device, and compatibility with the widest range of applications possible. As Healthcare IT requirements evolve, you can be certain that OpenText will be there to provide superior solutions.

After attending this year’s HIMSS tradeshow, I am as excited as ever about the direction healthcare is heading with regard to new information technologies. Even compared to last year’s event, I can see a real difference in the passion healthcare providers are displaying in seeking out new technologies to deliver better care and service–in particular those that can help them address security, compliance and data privacy. Yes, regulations and compliance mandates like HIPAA means a lot more accountability and a lot more work. But rather than responding to this requirement as if they are being forced to comply, the healthcare community seems eager to find the smartest IT solutions for their compliance needs. They understand that, ultimately, regulatory compliance will improve not just document security, but also patient care and even bottom line.

I attended HIMSS12 representing OpenText’s Fax and Document Distribution Group in an effort to connect with customers in need of a fax-based document management solution. HIMSS is designed to make the job of finding the right IT solutions easy, but it can be difficult to find something if you don’t know what you should be looking for. In some cases, people don’t even know that fax technology can be a viable and effective solution for them. For example, at HIMSS12, I met someone who provides consultancy services for hospitals to improve their process workflows, and she said it had never occurred to her that fax could solve problems for her clients. Further discussions with her saw her realize that OpenText fax solutions can help quite a few of her clients increase efficiency and productivity, reduce costs and enhance the service they offer their customers. It felt great to help her, and it was a welcome reminder that trusted fax technology continues to play a pivotal role in the healthcare marketplace.

It was heartening to see a vibrant healthcare IT dialogue at play, and I look forward to attending next year.

With the desire for the highest quality of patient care in the forefront, healthcare organizations, like yours, are facing many challenges when it comes to secure document delivery and storage. We’ve realized regardless of your size, organizations are looking to technology to reduce cost, safeguard information, maintain the ever-changing regulatory requirements and improve internal workflow processes.

Healthcare IT News wants to know: What are your biggest challenges for developing a centralized digital document delivery strategy that complies with healthcare industry regulations?

Please take part in this five-minute survey, and as a thank you you’ll receive a complimentary copy of the research report that will be published based on your answers.

Advocate BroMenn Medical Center is a full-service, 221-bed hospital serving central Illinois for more than a century. It is staffed by more than 1,800 employees, 350 physicians and 800 volunteers. Efficiency can be elusive when hospitals contend with outdated, manual processes. For BroMenn, incoming physician orders for radiology, cardiology, and surgical procedures previously arrived on fax machines. The Radiology Department alone receives up to 110 orders per day requesting MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds, or x-rays. Between reduced staff productivity, denied insurance claims, delayed procedures, and patient dissatisfaction, BroMenn needed a solution that could support their overall mission for exceptional patient care and best healthcare practices while improving processes.

By working with Risetime, a Chicago-based solutions provider, to digitize and automate the management of physician orders BroMenn implemented ECM solutions from Open Text and Microsoft. The combined solution which included Open Text Fax Server integrated with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, Open Text Fax Server Connector for SharePoint 2.0, Risetime Medical Fax Management Solution for SharePoint, and Microsoft Silverlight, has enabled enhanced patient services, improved billing efficiencies for financial stability, and improved employee productivity.

BroMenn is in the process of expanding the pre-screening order process to other areas of the hospital, including cardiology, surgical care, and lab.

Adam Young, Field Project Lead with the Information Systems Department of Advocate BroMenn Medical Center offers advice to other hospitals dealing with paper-based, manual order processing. “If you don’t have a way to manage orders electronically now, Open Text Fax Server integrated with Microsoft SharePoint is one of the best ways to do it.”

Read the Full Case Study.

For additional product information, please visit: http://www.risetime.com/