Securely Share Electronic PHI Without an EMR

PHI

Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) refers to any Protected Health Information (PHI) that is covered under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) security regulations. ePHI is simply PHI which is produced, saved, transferred or received in an electronic form.

Sharing PHI Outside of an EMR

Despite rising use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) technology within many medical practices, medical providers nonetheless have the need to be able to securely share documents that contain Protected Health Information with recipients that are outside their EMR.

A doctor or other medical professional might need to include PHI in a document sent for purposes of a referral. A doctor might be providing a second opinion, or sending the results of a specialist’s exam.

Some providers also routinely communicate with insurance companies or lawyers as part of accident or workers compensation cases.

PHI Recipients Hard to Predict in Advance

It’s hard to predict in advance who you will need to share PHI-containing documents with. Such sharing of PHI with a recipient might happen infrequently. You might only need to share documents with a particular recipient (more…)

Medical Transcription Is Still Here

Why Surprised

The increase in use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems has led to a decrease in the traditional provider pattern of Dictate/Transcribe/Print. However, Medical Transcription is still here because several important segments of the medical community are likely to continue using dictation and transcription for the foreseeable future.  These include providers needing to communicate with professionals outside the practice. Physicians doing a second opinion, or exams for insurance companies (life insurance, accidents) or workers comp and disability claims, are all key users of traditional dictation and transcription services.

Medical Transcription Is Still Here Because MDs Shouldn’t Enter Data

computer-1149148_640Another reason Medical Transcription is still here is because many doctors have quickly grown tired of spending a good part of their day entering data into a computer (more…)

Customer Upload Customization

classic-car-1130619_640

For Customer Upload, Customization is the Key

Our Customer Upload feature has long been an easy and popular feature that allows our users to receive files of any size from their customers and clients using a unique link that can be shared by email or incorporated into a website. We’ve long offered the ability to personalize how a MYDOCSONLINE Customer Upload page looks and acts, with options that include:

  • Free “branding” which replaces our logo with that of our user’s company.
  • The ability to “suppress” display of the logo when embedded on a user’s website.
  • The optional display of a “Done” button that allows customers to repeat the upload process multiple times to add more files.

And now we’ve added more customization features:

  • The default “Upload files to…” heading can now be replaced by custom “instructions” that can include html markup.
  • The prompts “Who are the files from” and “Your email address” can be customized to reflect how the user interacts with their customer. For instance, one of our users prefers “Name of Cardholder” and “Email of Cardholder“.
  • The normally optional “Comment” can also have a custom label and be made a required field. The user described above, for instance, prefers “Order # and Additional Comments“.

(more…)

Desktop App Not Affected by End of Java Plugins

The biggest security headache for Java users has been “Java Applets” that run inside many browsers. Oracle has finally announced the end of support for plugins in the next big release of Java.

All of this has no effect on the My Docs Online Desktop App, which does not use plugin technology, but instead relies on the recommended “Java Web Start”.

What’s going on with My Docs?

Let’s face it – change is hard.

MDO Professional File SharingWe’ve been working with the same home page look for a few years now, and we’re admittedly past due for an update. To be honest, we’ve had this in the works for awhile now, but Google forced our hand with some search algorithm changes that are going into effect this week.

There’s nothing like a deadline to force movement, right?

If you’re already a My Docs Online user, the biggest change is in the non-logged in, or the informational pages for the site. The logged in pages will look much the same.

What has changed?

The biggest change is that the informational pages are more mobile friendly. The new site design will move things around to fit on whatever device you’re using.

We’ve also re-focused our marketing message to target the kind of customers we want to serve, small businesses and professionals.

What hasn’t changed?

Our commitment to you – We’re in business to help you thrive in your business.

The Desktop App – The desktop app will continue to evolve as we add new features, but none were added with this website update. (more…)

Crunching the Numbers on the Enhanced Share Feature

pie-chart-149727_640

We released our New & Improved Share feature six weeks ago, and here are some interesting statistics:

  • 50% of Shares used the option to generate a link the user sends directly to recipients
  • 50% of Shares used My Docs Online to deliver the link via email
  • 10% of Shares used a “Smart Label” (introduced with the release for the Web Client, but not yet available in the Desktop App)
  • 8% of Shares used the Password option
  • 99% of all Shares included 30 or fewer files
  • 59% of all Shares were for a single file, while about a third were for between 2 and 10 files
  • Among accounts using the Share feature, the top 20% averaged 53 Shares each, while the bottom 20% have done a single Share

There is the expected “long tail” when you look at the number of files in a particular Share, with a few Shares including hundreds of files. (more…)

Scheduled Outage Midnight Eastern Daylight Time Monday, March 9

UPDATE: The outage for networking hardware upgrade is complete.

An outage is scheduled for Midnight Eastern Daylight Time Monday, March 9, lasting for approximately 1 hour and ending at 1 am Eastern Daylight Time Tuesday, March 10. (0400 – 0500 Universal Time Tuesday March 10).

The outage is for a data center networking hardware upgrade.

Any updates during the outage will be posted at http://mdosupport.tumblr.com/

New Customer Upload features: Notification flag, subfolder links for individual users

The Web Client Notification Flag feature, previously beta tested with support for Administrator IDs only, has been released for all group users (Web Client only). If email notification is ON for Customer Upload for a particular user, the new indicator will also alert that user graphically:

Clicking on the white flag will drop down a lost of Customer Upload notifications, and clicking on a particular notification will directly open the folder where the new file(s) are located.

For more information see the FAQ.

We also recently added a new feature for Customer Upload — individual links for individual users in your group account. This can give individual employees their own unique link to send to customers, with the resulting subfolders and files created by the Customer Upload process delivered, along with notification, to that employee’s private folder.

If you are interested in exploring how to leverage this new feature email support for a consultation.

NO My Docs Online “Heartbleed” OpenSSL Vulnerability

The recent internet security vulnerability known as “Heartbleed” did not, and does not, involve My Docs Online.  Many secure sites on the internet are recommending users change their passwords, even after those sites have ‘patched’ the vulnerability.

There is no need to do that at My Docs Online. We don’t use, and never have used, the versions of OpenSSL involved.

Haven’t heard of Heartbleed? Other sites you use may be compromised. You can learn more here.

We’re Now Pre-Zipping Shared Files for Quicker, Easier Delivery

We’ve improved our zip processing for files you deliver via “Share” using the Desktop App or the web interface (the new web client, not the “classic” version).

Now we start the zip processing for all the files you Share right after you do the Share, and almost always have it ready on the file delivery page by the time the recipient sees it.

There’s a new link right on the page to immediately download all as a zip:

It’s only for Shares of more than one file, and is limited to a total size of all files under 2 GB (over that and the browser will have trouble anyway).

The zip processing for users logged into an actual account remains unchanged, but those users have the option of downloading via the Desktop App.