Maintaining HIPAA compliance with Online Data Storage

HIPAA Compliance

Keeping patient records secure and private is the concern of every hospital and health care provider, but they are often overwhelmed with years and years of patient information and the lack of adequate storage space. Destroying these health records in order to make room for more storage is often not an option. Patients want access to all of their health care records, and physicians need them in order to better diagnose patients. Online data storage is a way to satisfy all of these issues.

Using online data storage for these records allows easier access for patients, and offers easier sharing of patient information from hospital to physician, as well as from physician to physician. Storing health records online isn’t, however, without security concerns. Patients, hospitals, and physicians want assurance that these confidential records will remain safe, private, and secure, and will only be accessed by those authorized to do so.

What is HIPAA?

HIPAA or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was created in order to protect health information and give patients certain rights regarding their private health information. It also allows for disclosure of health information necessary for patient care. This act specifies safeguards necessary for administrative, and physical and technical handling of patient health information. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS.gov) HIPAA has many requirements and restrictions. It requires safeguards for:

1. Access Control
2. Audit Controls
3. Person or Entity Authentication

Access control is defined in the HIPAA Privacy Rule as “the ability or the means necessary to read, write, modify, or communicate data/information or otherwise use any system resource.” It should allow authorized users to only access the minimum amount of information necessary to complete job functions. The Access Control specification also requires the implementation of an exclusive user identification or user ID, and immediate access in case of an emergency.

What Type of Security is Necessary?

When dealing with patient records in an office, maintaining privacy and security usually involves storing patient files in locked cabinets where the files can be physically secured and visibly monitored at all times. When you are storing patient information online, certain precautions must be met in order to maintain the same security and privacy guaranteed each patient.

While HIPAA permits patient records to be transmitted over the Internet, businesses will want a service that offers file encryption, authentication and password protection in order to secure the information. Although HIPAA does not require online data storage services to have encryption, it does require that patient information be adequately protected and accessible only to authorized persons. Encryption is the best way to protect that information and ensure authorized access to those records. It is also important to offer backup services in case of a virus attack, flood, or fire. Finally, the service must offer a method of tracking any security breach, as well as the ability to lock out former employees after they have left or been terminated. When storing patient information, it is important to stay HIPAA compliant, as the fines for not doing so are expensive. While online data storage for health care businesses guarantee less worry, work, and expense for health care providers, the service is only as good as the security offered. Remaining HIPAA compliant is vital in order to continue a good business relationship with the health care industry.

Tips for motivating and retaining good employees

retain employees

In today’s tough economic environment, with job cuts and pay decreases, it can be a challenge to keep your employees focused on their job and motivated. While many employers are struggling and can’t offer pay raises, bonuses and other cash benefits to their employees, there are a variety of other creative ways to keep them happy and on the job. In fact, statistics show that people do not necessarily need praise in the form of money to stay motivated. Most actually prefer some other form of recognition. Here are some tips that can help boost your employees’ morale and productivity, resulting in your motivating and retaining good employees.

Tips for Motivating and Retaining Good Employees

1. First, always address your staff by their name. It is a natural instinct for people to want to feel valued. They want to be recognized. Make it a priority to learn your employee’s names and always address them by name. It can be demoralizing to know that your boss does not care enough to know who you are.

2. Give praise. People want to be recognized for their efforts. Giving on the spot recognition, praise at employee meetings or recognition in the employee newsletter for those groups and individuals that go the extra mile is a great way to boost morale. While it is great to point out team efforts, people tend to crave individual recognition as well.

3. Offer opportunities. These can really be quite simple. Help your employees focus on their career path by offering them one on one training or advice. Reward your hard working employees with special job titles. Job titles are very important to workers. A fancy title makes them feel good about themselves and offers respect and praise from friends, family and other co-workers. 4. Provide leadership opportunities. Recognize your hard working employees by letting them take on a leadership role. Have them present at a company meeting, take on additional responsibilities or let them lead up a company project.

5. Foster Team Spirit. Make the time to gather employees together and drum up some fun competitions will very often foster increased work production. A great simple reward for the competition is extra time off. Now that does not mean extra vacation days, but simply letting employees come to work a little late one day, take an extended lunch hour or leave early. Taking an employee picture, framing it and hanging it can also foster a sense of belonging.

6. Provide a Good Working Environment. Making sure the work space is clean, cosmetically appealing and comfortable actually can make a difference. Employees are more motivated to come to work each day if they have an inviting environment to report to.

7. Have Casual Dress Days. Employees love to dress down and offering them an opportunity to do so can brighten their spirits and keep them happy. Many places of business will do dress down Fridays. Another fun idea is to have dress down theme days. For example the week of the Super bowl you could wear your favorite team jersey, on St. Patrick’s Day everyone could wear green and on Halloween people could come in a costume.

8. Provide opportunities for social gatherings. A final great way to keep company morale high is to offer employees time away from the office to socialize. Having a summer company picnic, a holiday party, gathering for a softball game or a trip to the golf course are all fun ideas.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Lead Generation

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing provides a way for businesses to increase their “word of mouth” advertising.

Word of mouth has always been a powerful method of promoting products and services. Think about it – when you need a new mechanic for your car, do you trust the advertisements in the newspaper or your friend who tells you how great their mechanic is?

Social networking makes it possible to establish relationships and build trust online, which allows businesses to indirectly market their products and services to people who are more receptive to the marketing messages you are sending out. Generally, people are more trusting of social media sites than they are of more traditional websites selling products or services directly, because the users of social media websites feel that there are fewer people who would have something to gain by reviewing and recommending another’s product or service.

Social media marketing offers a number of benefits you would be hard pressed to find in other forms of marketing, including:

1. Ability to create brand awareness. As more people see your business name and the link to your site, your logo, and other details found in social media profiles, you establish more brand awareness among your potential client base.

2. Trust is established through natural connections and relationships that develop in online communities.

3. Your main website will gain traffic from niche conversations had through social networking websites, discussions, groups, and through blog comments.

4. Search engine optimization is increased through the increasing number of high quality links to your site and/or blog as other community members link to you and as you link to yourself from various social media sites.

5. Increased visibility in search engines will boost the number of visitors who find your website when searching keywords related to your industry.

6. Having a following on various social sites will decrease your dependence on search engines in general, since you’ll have a number of other websites helping to drive traffic to your site or blog.

7. Your participation in social media discussions and groups helps you see what is going on within your niche and find out what people want to see in the products and services you offer simply by listening to what people say to one another.

8. When you are actively involved in social media, you have the opportunity to manage your reputation. You can respond to complaints in a timely manner, encourage people to talk about their good experiences with your company, and keep an eye on what is being said about you in general by your client base.

9. You can discover more about the needs, desires and trends that encourage your market niche to spend money, and use that information to fuel your marketing efforts.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing Linking Strategies

It’s possible to obtain links to your website from a few different sources online – including companies who sell links to your site. One of the primary advantages of using social media marketing is that you obtain numerous links to your website and blog from multiple sources. When you publish a new blog post or an article on your website, you can automatically update each of your social media profiles across multiple websites to reflect the new post – and include a link back to your site. If your followers, fans, or connections appreciate the information in your blog posts or article, you’ll see them announcing these to their followers, fans or connections, quickly growing the number of incoming links through social media. You end up with links to your site strategically placed everywhere your potential client base is already visiting online, which means the people who are clicking those links are already your targeted prospects, and have already established somewhat of a relationship with you through their connection on these social media sites.