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Transcript

[00:00:02.548 – [00:00:25.879]

Welcome to HealthData Talks where industry experts offer bite  sized tips and trends for managing  legacy data.  So, thank you for joining us. I’m Amy Holmes from Harmony Healthcare IT and  [am joined today by my colleague, Susan Martinez who is a product specialist  here at Harmony. Thank you for being here, Susan.  Hi, thanks for having me.

[00:00:28.239] – [00:01:10.870]

So, Susan, can you start by giving our listeners  a quick overview of your role here as a product  specialist?  Sure, officially I work with the product team and I’m lucky enough  to collaborate with every group here at Harmony. In product I bring an understanding  of health care workflows for meaningful product features. I also work with sales and marketing demonstrations. I oftentimes work with operations to create product documents  and literature and I work with human resources to create training modules. I really  just like to learn how something works and put it into perspective for others so they understand it as well. Well, I know we all appreciate your hard work and the things that you offer  at the departments.

[00:01:12.290] – [00:02:07.000]

Let’s dive into our topic around Records Release. So Susan, can you discuss how  facility closures, mergers and acquisitions can disrupt the management of medical  and employee records. Sure. So when we see movement in organizational structure and growth,  we find several areas affected, maintaining continuity of care for  patients, ensuring data security and compliance  with HIPAA and other regulations. Streamlining the request and you might not have staffing or subject matter experts left in the organizations that are familiar with the application for the releases.  In the event of a closure, the organization should consider a plan for records retention and release. For both the short and long term. This could include   outsourcing the function of records release.

[00:02:08.929] – [00:02:40.118]

So let’s explore why patients,  employers or other parties may  request medical and employee  [00:02:15.219] records long and short term. Yeah, there are many reasons people need access  to their health and or employment records, patient care, litigation,  insurance audits,  workers compensation, or  just a simple validation of employment.  So one of the things that can make the release of records easier is a data archive and that’s one of our key offerings here with our product HealthData Archiver.

[00:02:43.020] – [00:03:30.944]

Can you talk about what an archive is  and how it can support records management  and release for an organization that’s transition?  Oh, yeah, sure. So for those  that aren’t familiar, a data archive consolidates records from any application into a single central database that has a user interface sitting on top and offers workflows for users like clinicians and HIM departments to view that historic data.  So having this set up this centralized setup versus keeping old EHRs up and running can often be more cost efficient and user friendly. So we have workflows that facilitate easy release of information to patients and other parties long term.

[00:03:34.368] – [00:05:01.745]

So what makes Harmony Healthcare IT’s record release service different in your opinion?  Well, in my opinion, who better to  release these records than the teams that have extracted, configured, and planned the archival? We know that data and how to present  it for requests on top   of knowing industry regulation. So with Harmony’s records release services, there are multiple benefits, we can securely extract  the data from legacy systems, we configure it and help the archive  in a really meaningful way. We know the features. So we know to quickly prepare a record while  only providing the information being requested. As far as the request portion. We have a user friendly online portal for record requests.  We follow a very stringent authentication and authorization process where we authenticate the requester and records that have been our archived and have a comprehensive authorization form that needs to be issued with a picture ID similar to a state ID. We ensure secure delivery of records to authorized recipients. And at the end, we have a detailed  audit trail for ensuring compliance because security is so important to us. We are HIPAA compliant and HITRUST certified.

[00:05:04.290] – [00:06:25.889]

So let’s explain HITRUST to our listeners that may not be familiar with it and talk about how it’s different from HIPAA. Yeah. Sure. So HIPAA is a federal act that sets compliance standards.  HITRUST is an organization  that has established a common security framework to help companies reach HIPAA standards and beyond. So the HITRUST certification covers  several compliance frameworks like  HIPAA, NIST, PSI, and ISO. This third party recognition is a key  difference between being high trust certified and being HIPAA compliant. So let’s say an organization is facing a transition. What do you recommend as some important planning steps that they can practice to make that transition smooth?  Yeah, so, start proactively planning for facility transitions early on. From our perspective, the archival process records  release is enabled by archive. So configuration of that data source is very important. We wanna focus on ensuring the data is configured properly with release in mind  and we have a data source that is structured  for providing a granular record.

[00:06:30.358] – [00:07:04.069]

Well, thank you, Susan for covering so many good considerations around records release, especially for an organization that’s facing a merger or acquisition or a closure. Yeah, thanks Amy for having me. I appreciate it. And to our audience, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to join us next time for another episode covering trends and  tips for managing health data. That’s it for this session of HealthData Talks. Check out helpful resources at HarmonyHIT.com and follow us in your favorite podcast app to catch future episodes. We’ll see you next time.

Speakers

Host:
Amy Holmes, Director of Marketing at Harmony Healthcare IT, is responsible for all aspects of marketing, helping connect the healthcare market with our legacy
data management solutions.

Guest: 

Susan Martinez, Product Specialist at Harmony Healthcare IT, brings a unique work history from both design and almost 20 years of healthcare experience to the team.  Blending her design background with healthcare experience, she focuses on understanding workflows and data content to assist our Product team create relevant, intuitive, and comprehensive products and features.