NASCO, a healthcare claims administrator provider for BlueCross and BlueShield companies, deployed SumTotal’s integrated talent management platform to streamline performance management processes and introduce efficiencies to better manage its workforce. It chose SumTotal for its easy-to-use technology and personalized approach to service and support. See how it achieved a 38% improvement in its performance management process.
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London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) needed a workforce management solution that could accommodate the requirements of a 9,000+ employee organization with multiple unions and facilities. Learn how LHSC replaced its cumbersome and outdated timekeeping systems, with a solution that helped enhance payroll accuracy and efficiency, comply with labor and organizational rules, and advance the human resources (HR) agenda.
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Increasingly complex regulatory requirements in the health care industry have intensified pressures on health systems to assure compliance and operational governance while maximizing business performance. This study draws on a survey conducted by Healthcare IT News and Healthcare Finance News to share strategies that will improve governance, compliance, and business performance across today’s health care organization.
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As software-as-a-service (SaaS) spreads rapidly as a business model among independent software vendors (ISVs), the importance of SaaS configurability has come to the fore. With increasingly competitive deployments, the ability of individual tenants to configure their own options, business processes, and data structures will become the key differentiator among otherwise similar offerings—and will often prove critical to
the success or failure of a SaaS deployment. Discover the variety of configurable options, typical technical challenges, and common approaches for optimizing SaaS configurability.
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Today’s technology and application leaders are pressured to deliver functionality that drives efficiency, innovation, and growth—while reducing costs. As a result, technology and application portfolio management (APM) are top business priorities. Learn about a framework for implementing an APM program that can enable your company to monitor and analyze the impact of application changes and reduce portfolio complexity.
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Acts of cyber aggression could lead to a cyber war or worse. Capitol Hill is giving attention to this security issue, and vendors are creating new offerings and expanding existing programs—creating new opportunities in the defense industry and opening doors for new players. Learn more about the blurring between information security vendors servicing the private sector and those in the defense and intelligence industry.
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Unencrypted communication between users’ workstations and the backend SAP servers is a significant vulnerability to your SAP environment. This can put the confidential data inside your SAP systems and your entire business activity at risk—and have a negative impact on your customers. Find out how to reduce business risks and improve audit results through encrypted communication and two-factor user authentication for SAP.
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Currently, India’s population is approximately 1.0009 billion. The middle class is large and still growing; wages were low, but now are some of the best in various industries; many workers are well educated and speak English; and investors are optimistic and local stocks are up. Despite political turmoil, the country presses on with economic reforms. But for potential investors, there’s still cause for worry—find out why.
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In 2006, Poudre Valley Health System (PVHS) was about to open a new hospital in Colorado (US). PVHS’s human resources (HR) department saw the need to change some existing processes, including the method of referencing job candidates. After one year of using a new HR hiring process solution, PVHS was able to predict supervisor evaluations of new hires and had the potential to save over $850,000 (USD). Learn more.
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For the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to fulfill its vital health mission, it must expedite and streamline its workflow processes—and the forms, approvals, and documents associated with those processes. As NIMH grew, tracking and managing forms was just one challenge that needed to be addressed. Learn about the Web-based workflow software that provides users with automated business process management.
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Electronic product code information services (EPCIS) is a standard mechanism for inter-company collaboration and data sharing, which can enable health care partners to deploy solutions that meet short-term mandates driven by patient safety, as well as lay the foundation for long-term business value. Learn more about the impact of EPCIS in a study concerning data management and data sharing in the health care supply chain.
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Unimed Porto Alegre, with 41 percent of the health care market share in Sao Paolo (Brazil) managed to make significant improvements to its operations by implementing a new solution to deal with hundreds of thousands of monthly online transactions. For one thing, the payment process has been reduced from 3 days to 10 hours or less. Learn about the other benefits this online customer service solution provides.
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Brazilian health care cooperative Assefaz wanted to change its health care plan administration system, as it didn’t offer enough options to create business rules and specific procedures. The new system it chose offers new modules, including Medical Audits. Find out how the co-op divided up the implementation, and how the new solution has streamlined numerous processes related to its administrative health care services.
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Hospitals around the world are facing increased pressure to improve operations from multiple directions. Legal requirements, aging populations, and an ever-growing need to be service-oriented are forcing hospitals to do more with less. Hospitals could be doing more to coordinate, analyze, and use data to improve operational performance. A new generation of business intelligence (BI) tools, such as dashboards, can help.
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Until recently, St. Vincent Heart Center used an HTML-based intranet to disseminate various types of information to its 470 employees and 200 contract workers. But information on that system wasn’t easy to find. Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 offers the organization easy access to information—and it enhances productivity and supports increased security for confidential information. Read more about the benefits.
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Recent EquaTerra market research finds a consensus among western business leaders that increased globalization is inevitable—and that it will generally be beneficial. Quickly and efficiently leveraging opportunities created by globalization is the best way to avoid being overwhelmed by its challenges. Learn how to compare buyer and service provider data and get insight into developing a responsive global strategy.
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For many companies, the second largest cost after people is facilities. Solutions have evolved from traditional out-tasking and outsourcing to the more recent strategy of integrating facilities management and real estate under a single service provider. But first, understand marketplace realities: provider capabilities don’t always line up with buyer expectations. Learn about the challenges of integrating these services.
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Kaiser Permanente serves the health care needs of 8.2 million members across the US. To maintain high quality of service, Kaiser continually invests in training its employees at all levels of the organization. But its regionally based training programs were resulting in inconsistent training and massive duplication of effort. Find out about the learning management solution Kaiser installed and the subsequent benefits.
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Server security is a key issue for the health care industry. Between an expanding body of regulations and the need for 24/7/365 system availability, it’s essential to address vulnerabilities as soon as possible. But with constant new threats, protecting your server isn’t easy. Learn about the special needs of server security in the health care environment, and how you can have comprehensive protection with no down time.
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Electronic health records can provide many benefits for patients and health care providers and insurers. Health care technology managers should have a strategic technical background to make informed decisions about integrating, partnering, or supporting personal health care record (PHR) solutions. Learn best practices on implementation, and how to leverage your existing health care technologies with new PHR platforms.
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University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UWHC) had never suffered from a shortage of data sources. But the executives felt it wasn’t effectively using this data to make decisions—leading the university to seek a solution that would help it rise above the data confusion. With an automated dashboard system from ActiveStrategy, the UWHC has aggregated its data and can now focus on issues that will help move its strategy forward.
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JACIE, a non-profit corporation, was looking for an application that would enable a more effective hospital accreditation process, as well as provide the ability to process complex medical files. With the help of Polymita, JACIE created a decision support system that could centralize access to important information and manage an unlimited number of certification processes simultaneously—without increasing the resources.
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Sant Joan de Déu Hospital is one of the most important hospitals in Spain, and specializes in pediatrics and women’s medicine. Because of its status, it needed to find a way to automate its internal processes and develop a corporate portal for patients and health professionals. Since deploying a business process management (BPM) solution, Sant Joan has increased accessibility and created autonomy within its departments.
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Delivering full-service home care services to over 1.5 million people in the US was challenging enough for Apria Healthcare. Added to that was the need to meet government and industry regulations and maintain the highest standards of skills and knowledge. To overcome these challenges, Apria implemented a learning content management system (LCMS) that has helped the company deliver the rapid training it was looking for.
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La corporación no lucrativa JACIE buscaba una aplicación que le permitiera agilizar el proceso de acreditación y el procesamiento de expedientes para varios centros médicos en Europa. Asimismo, requería que todos los usuarios tuvieran acceso a la comunicación y a un sistema de soporte a las decisiones. Con la ayuda de Polymita, JACIE logró, entre otros beneficios, centralizar el acceso a la información y aumentar su capacidad productiva.
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UreSil, a manufacturer of specialized health care products, feared its legacy manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software was hindering efficiency and compliance. The Sage ERP X3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) came to the rescue, and after a formal ERP training program, full implementation required only one week. All processes, including tracking and inventory, are now streamlined, flexible—and compliant.
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What do you do with a growing number of customers and not enough office space for workers? Health eConnex, a health care claims-processing service, found the solution in optical character recognition (OCR) for AnyDoc Software’s remote verification feature. Now employees telework, processing 75,000 claims a day with 99.5 percent accuracy. Learn how the solution helped make manual data entry a thing of the past.
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Bluecross Blueshield of South Carolina (BCBSSC) had been using optical character recognition (OCR) technology for many years, but wanted to improve productivity by automating its claims processing system from document and data capture to document storage. By integrating AnyDocCLAIM into its existing automated system, BCBSSC has increased its processing speed and averages more than 400 claims per hour.
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As a provider of employee benefits, CIGNA must observe a bevy of regulatory compliance mandates. Because much of its efforts are compliance-focused, it continually embraces technology, searching for new products to better manage its benefit offerings and track its security risks. With QualysGuard’s vulnerability management solution, CIGNA has mitigated vulnerabilities and remained up-to-date with compliance regulations.
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Medical device manufacturers face the usual manufacturing challenges, with the added burden of having to plan, develop, test, and produce in an environment controlled by strict regulatory requirements. With paper-based systems, product lifecycle documentation adds a huge burden to an already colossal task. Find out how you can “hardwire” compliance into product development—without short-circuiting your business processes.
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When you decide to implement a new fax software solution, you should review how the solution will be implemented and managed, as well as its ability to grow with your network. Within a Windows network, critical architectural, administrative, and usage concerns should be thoroughly considered. Review your options with this fax server overview outlining the benefits of different fax servers and e-mail integration.
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Secure transmission of health care information is critical to your medical organization and your clients. Volumes of critical medical data are sent to you every day, making it imperative that the information be sent quickly and safely. Fax servers are easy-to-use point-to-point systems that provide secure transmission of confidential information—saving you time and money while protecting all your sensitive data.
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The open architecture of Microsoft Dynamics GP provides a flexible solution for organizations implementing a business management system. The foundation is provided by the Dexterity runtime engine and Microsoft SQL Server, helping Microsoft Dynamics GP offer many features and benefits. These include an extendable architecture allowing add-ons and vertical enhancements—so that organizations can grow today and tomorrow.
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Systems integration with service-oriented architecture (SOA) helps you reuse the functionality in your mainframe applications. Extending your mainframes to an SOA through Web services will accelerate your time to market, keep your costs low, and help you avoid undue risk. Keep your business dynamic and current, and stay competitive in today’s marketplace—modernize your existing mainframes with SOA.
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Storage area networks (SANs) are key components in IT organizations, as they provide access to and protection of critical data. Managing data storage is becoming increasingly complex, with regulatory and corporate requirements dictating national disaster protection. Whether your company is near or far, remote SANs store your critical data, saving you and your company from losses in even the most dire of circumstances.
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Server consolidation is the reason enterprises deploy server virtualization technologies across their data centers, improving server and processor use. As more virtual servers are consolidated onto a single server, demand is increased on the central processing unit (CPU) and host bus interfaces. However, you can do more with less by deploying a fibre channel host bus adapter, enhancing your server consolidation levels.
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Reducing server management complexity and total cost of ownership (TCO) are key IT goals. There’s a new generation of automated management tools designed to enable provisioning, monitoring, and control of blade systems in infrastructure deployments. This means more work in less time, ensuring IT talent is responding to business needs—resulting in improved TCO metrics rather than time-consuming manual processes.
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In the life sciences industry, marketing operations (in particular the packaging, labeling, and final steps of new product development) remain virtually untouched by the computerized systems integration pervading the rest of the sector. However, cost-effective approaches do exist for digital workflow and asset management software and services, and can provide you with a wealth of cost savings and operations efficiencies.
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For organizations deploying many servers, total cost of ownership (TCO) analyses favor blade over rack-optimized systems. Blade server systems—reducing both capital and operating expenses—exploit economies of scale when deploying servers in volume. Saving power, cooling, and space by more than 25 percent, the blade advantage is particularly relevant for servers working in conjunction with storage area networks (SANs).
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For cheese producer Mozzarella Fresca, producing multiple products was a scheduling challenge, and it needed a solution that could do more than Excel-based tools. The Zemeter Scheduler solution was able to add 15 percent capacity by optimizing scheduling processes. In fact, from molding to packaging, Zemeter Scheduler increased efficiency without Mozzarella Fresca needing to invest in new equipment.
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Is it beneficial to use multiple types of virtualization software together? The answer: yes. Combining complementary virtualization technologies provides a stronger, more robust solution that reduces costs, maximizes return on investment (ROI), and minimizes the number of servers to manage. By consolidating these technologies, organizations can get the most out of the application, hardware, and operating system (OS).
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When it comes to disaster recovery (DR) software, companies should think of it as an insurance policy—not just software that recovers lost data. Being prepared for disaster makes good business sense, but oddly enough, few companies are. Because Linux distributions don’t include DR tools, companies must look to a file-based recovery solution that can recover the entire system and eliminate the need to rebuild.
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Over the past few years, vulnerabilities have exploded across all types of platforms—leaving IT security and operations teams scratching their heads. Today, many companies use the scan-and-patch method for managing vulnerabilities—a reactive security process that should be avoided. By combining assessment and remediation, companies create a vulnerability management program that can rapidly respond to emerging threats.
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In this new era of corporate governance, risk avoidance, and responsibility, organizations are more than ever held accountable if their data is not properly protected. As such, many are finding new ways to address security risks, by developing multiple layers of defense to reduce points of weakness. Deploying data encryption technology is a good place to start—but the key is making the right choice.
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Heightened awareness of vulnerabilities in sensitive stored data has resulted in the increased application of encryption technology. To secure data at rest, a well-defined process for handling the keys used to encrypt data—as well as the keys used to safeguard the data encryption keys—is essential. With the proper key management controls in place, companies can ensure that data is effectively secured and recoverable.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) often face the same challenges as large businesses—just on a smaller scale. One such challenge is finding a business solution that manages expansion and addresses complex reporting and compliance issues. Many SMBs are now adopting enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions—complete with tools to help them meet the current and future needs of their growing business.
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Today, companies are looking to improve work processes, comply with legislation, and increase productivity—and they’re implementing electronic document management systems (EDMS) to help them effectively manage their information. By deploying EDMS—which are capable of capturing, storing, and retrieving records, files, and folders—these companies are achieving unprecedented levels of control, efficiency, and automation.
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In the $1.8 billion market of document management services, only 10 percent is billed by dealers. So how can they increase their share of the managed print services trend? The dealer’s path to advantage lies in its service and supply organization. To make this transition, the dealer needs a tool that gathers knowledge of the client’s fleet and identifies where printing dollars can be saved.
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How do companies address the out-of-control costs associated with network printing? Many look to control them by outsourcing their managed printer services. The transition from basic dealer services to a holistic approach—where the dealer manages the print services for the entire organization—has its challenges. With printer fleet management tools, companies gain a competitive advantage and save on printing costs.
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To play any popular online computer game, all a user needs is a computer and an Internet connection. But there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than this gamer may realize. In order to interact in a shared virtual environment, the system the user connects to requires technology capable of creating, operating, and modifying persistent, distributed, three-dimensional virtual worlds.
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Going mobile has become a growing trend, with many businesses reaching well beyond the use of cellular phones as their only lines of communication. Why? Because these businesses realize that linking the mobile workforce with the enterprise and its data resources—using mobile applications—is key to enhancing productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. Choosing the right devices, however, can be very challenging.
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Counterfeit medicine is a major threat to the pharmaceutical industry. Seven percent of the medicine worldwide is counterfeit; however, advances in packaging and labeling technologies are coming to the industry’s aid. Pharmaceutical companies are using pilot projects to help labeling implementations throughout the supply chain to increase the availability of safe, licensed medicine and thwart the underground drug market.
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The process of implementing a new enterprise solution is incredibly complex. This process can send your organization down a long road of beneficial—and sometimes painful—change. The good news, though, is that if the implementation is done right the first time, you won’t have to travel that road again. The key question: how do you do it right?
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Gruppo Tosinvest is by no means a single-process company. Beside a core focus on health care, it also runs businesses in the media, real estate, financial services, and engineering and construction sectors. With such an array of processes, controlling IT costs is of utmost importance. That’s why it decided to upgrade the enterprise software it had been running since 2001.
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Small to medium businesses (SMBs) need technology to survive in a competitive business environment. However, regardless of the business type, size, or industry, incorporating technology into existing frameworks involves risk—to productivity, customer service, operations, and the bottom line! The key to reducing risk and increasing productivity is thus the selection of technologies that will accommodate change in your business.
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Enterprises of all sizes are adopting Internet protocol (IP) telephony for cost savings and productivity gains—but high quality voice service takes more than just buying the latest equipment. Is IP telephony right for your organization and your network? Get the straight facts from an industry leader—along with a 7-step assessment and deployment checklist for a successful implementation.
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Effective communication uses many senses, but visual communication provides huge amounts of information, and can convey all sorts of meanings. Face to face, we can rely on visual cues; however, the amount of information transmitted via distant communication is limited by cost and complexity. And when the costs of transportation rise, broader use of remote visual communications becomes increasingly practical.
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Information management, which includes both data and content management, is an essential element of service-oriented architecture (SOA). Taking a service-oriented approach to information data can thus help you achieve greater value from your information assets. Implementing master data management (MDM) services can provide a multiplier effect, by delivering high-value business services over and above information integration services.
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Domain name system (DNS) best practices are becoming more standardized. However, DNS services are often overlooked simply because they are so commonplace. The result is poorly configured services that are either not fully functional, or easily compromised. To ensure that the Internet remains a reliable medium for information and commerce, further implementation of secure and efficient DNS will be required.
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Small to medium businesses have typically built their own domain name system (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services, used Windows DNS/DHCP, or turned to a hosted service provider for these services. This approach may appear to offer tremendous savings, but contains many hidden costs and risks that are not always apparent until a catastrophic loss of service occurs.
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To understand the power of cache poisoning and pharming, imagine that you’re logging on to your Internet banking service. The page looks a little odd, but the address is correct, and it has the same fields as usual. You might enter your credentials without thinking twice. Unfortunately, you’ve just provided a criminal syndicate with the contents of your bank account.
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In times like these, when IT spending is increasingly subject to cutbacks, finding out how to get "more for less" is as crucial to a company’s IT department as making sure that applications run smoothly. In Rome, Italy, Gruppo Tosinvest managed to prove that this challenge—which keeps legions of IT managers awake at night—can be solved.
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Software technologies can provide a single point of entry for prospects and health plan providers to educate new or renewing prospects on the full value of each offering. Behind the scenes, these technologies can also record all prospect preferences to allow sales, marketing, advertising, and product development to benefit from more targeted offerings and personalized messaging, at greatly reduced costs.
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The US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 applies to health care providers, health plans, and clearing houses that electronically maintain or transmit health information. Among other things, these entities are required to have data backup plans, disaster recovery plans, and emergency mode operation plans. Fortunately, there is a way to meet these security and contingency requirements.
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For today’s medical device manufacturer, today’s world is complex. The convergence of technology and implanted medical devices has led to some of the most innovative and effective new medical therapies in history. Unfortunately, that convergence has created tremendous complexities in the development, manufacture, and implantation of those devices. One area that continues to undergo transformation is patient device tracking (PDT).
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Workplace privacy issues are increasing dramatically, along with related employee complaints and litigation. As companies struggle to control health care costs, increase productivity, and maintain company confidentiality, they become concerned with how employees spend their time away from work. Meanwhile, employees naturally have a strong desire to limit “invasion” of their personal lives. Just where do you draw the line?
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The foremost concern of Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal (HSCM) is to provide quality health care service. But it also knows that unless it operates an efficient business, it will not be around to provide that service. That’s why HSCM needed a comprehensive suite that covered not just the backbone needs of any business, but also health care industry specifics.
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Héma-Québec manages the collection and distribution of blood and blood products for the province of Quebec (Canada). As Héma-Québec worked to enhance availability and quality, company leaders identified a need to make changes in the organization’s information technology (IT) systems. In June 2001, the company decided to implement a new system for the procurement and distribution of fractionated blood products.
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Gen-Probe Incorporated is a global leader in the development, manufacture, and marketing of nucleic acid tests, used primarily to diagnose diseases and screen donated blood. In 2004, thanks to rapid growth, it needed applications to support its customers’ ever-rising performance demands. In addition, it required advanced business applications for continued focus on product innovation and expansion into new geographic markets.
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To better understand record management (RM) challenges related to regulatory compliance in the financial services and health care industries, it is important to know why the laws and acts were written and codified. This knowledge will help organizations understand why the RM team is creating and maintaining new records, and how report management can ease RM compliance challenges.
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Like many health care providers, Wisconsin (US)-based Aurora faces pressures to improve care quality, while monitoring its bottom line. Asset optimization remains elusive for most such enterprises, but Aurora devised a plan to use a centralized service management call center to facilitate service requests, and dispatch resources. Aurora was thereby able to attain higher efficiency, and still strengthen service levels.
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In order to meet new performance targets mandated at the federal and state levels, the Department of Human Services in Chemung County, New York (US), deployed Salient Performance Management, a performance management solution from Salient Corporation. This solution helped streamline operations, allowing caseworkers, units, and entire agencies to meet and exceed the targets.
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With the advent of the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), security is no longer optional for health care organizations. As spyware risks grow, they must ensure that data is protected from unauthorized disclosure, and that it is available when needed. Thus, implementing anti-spyware measures is both a good business practice and a move towards ensuring regulatory compliance.
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Because of new compliance and regulation, HealthSouth Corporation, one of the US largest providers of health care services, needed a comprehensive view of its security risks, automated reporting on compliance to ensure published security standards, and to prioritize the remediation of critical risks. Through Preventsys Security Risk Management System, HealthSouth was able to audit it facilities remotely, and reduce overhead costs.
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