2017 HIPAA forecast: 3 important reminders

Although totally necessary, data privacy regulations are often a gigantic headache. And king among the various compliance standards is HIPAA. Despite the legislation’s enactment back in 2003, the rules governing electronic medical records and protected health information continue to change and evolve every year. Let’s take a moment to go over three things you need to remember for HIPAA compliance as 2017 unfolds.

Compliance leaves the office with you

When you take your phone, laptop, or tablet with you -- as you return home, or go to a meeting outside your office or a seminar out of state -- your data needs to get the same treatment it does inside the office. If you access data from unsecured devices or connections, you could be looking at stiff penalties when audit time rolls around.

As an extension of this principle, business partners with any involvement in your data storage, transfer, or protection are also required to employ best practices. If you have a legal firm on retainer with access to your network, it’s your responsibility to ensure that firm also adheres to compliance rules. Business Associate Agreements are the best way to shield yourself from mistreatment of data by a business partner, and they should be reviewed at least every year.

Most “optional” measures...aren’t actually optional

Confusingly, HHS’s Summary of the HIPAA Security Rule page has a heading titled Required and Addressable Implementation Specifications. The synopsis can be interpreted as, “Although we listed some safeguards as addressable, we actually mean that they have to be implemented. But how you do so is up to you.”

2016 saw a massive uptick in the number of HHS audits and the fines the government entity doled out. Consequently, whenever safeguards or measures allow for wiggle room or subjective interpretation, we always recommend going above and beyond. Compared to fines that soar into the millions of dollars, hiring a managed IT service provider is more than worth it.

This is about more than being “careful”

Some providers are quick to point out that compliance is about stringent safeguards to prevent even the tiniest of breaches. How do you think those practices would respond if you told them one Ponemon survey found that 90% of healthcare practices experienced a data breach during a two-year period?

Managing cyber security is becoming a problem for organizations in every industry. Business owners need to acknowledge that the threats are real, and that solutions must be exhaustive. In fact, most states have enacted their own variation of patient privacy legislation. So if you’ve found a thorough walkthrough of compliance written by someone located in another state, that’s not going to cut it.

To confidently achieve HIPAA compliance, you need IT technicians with experience adapting to years of changes to this complicated legal framework. Call us today so we can help you secure and manage your electronic medical records and protected health information.

The business benefits of CRM software

Investing in customer relationship management (CRM) software is absolutely essential for small- and medium-sized businesses that want to up their sales performance. It helps sales departments understand their clients, tailor their marketing efforts, and more. If your business isn’t already using CRM, here are five reasons why you should definitely give it a chance.

Grows with your business The ol’ Rolodex may have been useful for managing a few clients, but you’re going to need a better solution if you plan to maintain relationships with hundreds, possibly thousands, more. CRM scales with your business, meaning it can handle larger data sets and more clients as you expand your sales operation.

Organizes your data CRM software acts as a central database for all your sales records and transactions. This means important customer information can be retrieved in just a few clicks rather than rifling through thousands of documents, sticky-notes, and disorganized cabinets. And since CRM is hosted in the cloud, sales data, customer interactions, and other actionable information are available for the entire company.

Improves customer service Your sales team could be the most persuasive individuals in the world, but this means nothing if they can’t recall anything about their clients and their preferences. When your sales staff follows up on leads or existing customers, CRM will automatically retrieve contact history, past purchases, and customer preferences from your client database and display them on a single page during the call.

From here, sales representatives, armed with detailed customer information, will be able to recommend products and services that meet the client’s needs. So instead of struggling through a sales call, marketing employees can focus on delivering a professional sales pitch.

Streamlines your sales funnel CRM comes equipped with workflow management functions, supporting your sales pipeline in a number of ways. For example, you can configure your CRM to send instant follow-up emails when a lead visits a particular product page. You can even use automation to track where certain leads are in the sales pipeline and delegate the task to one of your closers.

Analyzes sales data With real-time sales information, business managers can track marketing campaigns and adjust their strategy accordingly. For instance, you might notice that click-through-rates for promotional emails and company newsletters are higher during Tuesday afternoon rather than Friday night. Having this information can help you focus your marketing efforts and message to generate more leads.

In addition, you can use CRM to analyze customer calling activity, market demographics, lead conversion rates, and key performance indicators to help inform future business decisions.

Understanding your customers can put you several steps ahead of the competition. If you need to manage contacts, eliminate time-consuming procedures, and improve your sales performance, CRM is the perfect business solution.

Contact us today to find out whether CRM is the right fit for your business.

The latest Cloud Print service from Google

Not too long ago, the thought of being able to access printers from your computer, tablets or smartphones was almost unheard of. But today, it’s a completely different story -- enter Google’s Cloud service. Now you can access both regular and Internet-enabled printers through the web. Read on for more information.

First things first, the printer needs to be connected to your primary computer (the one you’ll use to access the printer in the future). Once connected, the computer can be added to Cloud Print. If it isn’t already installed, you need to install Chrome for Windows or Mac. From there, type chrome://devices into the address bar to bring up devices Chrome can work with. Click “Add printer” and make sure the printer you want to link is ticked.

From the same screen, you’ll be able to configure printer settings. Click Manage next to any of the listed printers to upload new print jobs, rename or remove printers, or share a printer with someone else. This allows you to give certain people access to your printer.

If you need to print something off your mobile device, you can do so with the Cloud Print app on Android, where a print option should appear in the Sharing menu. It’s slightly trickier on iOS, but you can still cloud print from Google’s iOS apps using the Google-recommended file management, transfer and printing application PrintCentral Pro to bridge the gap. And as expected, Cloud Print works seamlessly with Chromebooks as well. Just choose Print from the main menu and voila!

If you’re interested in hearing more news on Google’s Cloud Print function or staying up-to-date on the IT world, feel free to let us know.