Happy new year from the Record Grabber team! We had a great 2018 with new challenges, growth, Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding, and Serena losing her cool at the US open. Cheers to 2019!
Wishing everyone an amazing year full of new successes, adventures, happiness, and another season of Stranger Things.
Sincerely,
Your friends at Record Grabber
Businesses must do all they can in these modern times to cut costs. That’s understandable; it’s partly why big investments are taken at the executive level with large cost analyses. Yet in the modern healthcare industry, organizations must ask of themselves not whether they can afford to outsource their record retrieval, but whether they can afford the time and resource investment of in-house record retrieval and storage. Record Grabber has the solution.
If the modern workplace can be summed up in one sentence, it’s “doing more with less”. Your employees at all levels are expected to learn more things and less time to do it in. For the healthcare sector, that means a greater potential for data breaches which means fines under HIPAA audit. With an overstretched workforce, nobody wants to waste time on follow-ups with cases, making repeat phone calls, and hanging on the line while contacts check information.
Too much time is wasted chasing contacts who have not returned a promised call. Your work may be delayed to the detriment of everyone else when a promised phone call does not arrive. Your employee must then use some of their valuable time to call the contact again, or compose an email, and wait for a response. The more time spent chasing up contacts is less time dedicated to the processes of their actual job. Not only could this potentially delay cases, but it could also lead to mistakes through a hectic workplace and possibly to misplaced data and a data breach.
Record destruction is a legal necessity; unfortunately, it’s time-consuming and prone to complications and risks. Older shredders can break down and not shred paper quite as well as a larger, professional shredders that can handle high volumes. Some need to be stored before shredding if the person responsible has other duties or limited to the amount of time they may shred. Improperly shredded documentation increases the risk of theft or loss and that too is a HIPAA violation.
All these things waste time for your employees and your organization. It’s always better to outsource. Record Grabber not only keeps electronic data safe from theft or loss, but we also free up time for your employees to get on with the processes of their jobs. Also, with the strong professional links we have forged with others in our industry, we guarantee a faster turnaround on requests.
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There is nothing wrong with fearing the prospect of a hacker invading your server. We have been warned about this in the workplace repeatedly since the internet went mainstream. With ransomware becoming common, hacking is a real and genuine threat to data security. Ransomware is a type of malware that locks down a server’s data and threatens to destroy it unless a ransom is paid – usually in bitcoin – but hacking is not the most common form of data breach.
According to Statista, the biggest source of data breach for 2017 in US Healthcare was “unauthorized disclosure”. In other words, unauthorized individuals have access to sensitive information to which permission has not been granted. It can include misplaced files left in public places, information left open on a abandoned computer screen, or when employees give another employee access to their work computer without sufficient privileges. This computer will have access to data that the unauthorized person will easily access. Even if they have no intention of accessing that data, the ability to do so is a data breach. According to a recent survey, 40% of employees healthcare have or would allow an unauthorized colleague to use their terminal. This has increased since 2014.
Most employers don’t allow personal communications except in emergency situations. However, some allow some leeway on checking social media while others do not have the infrastructure in place to block employees from accessing such sites. This leaves employees open to using e-commerce services at work. While most transactions go through well-known sites, according to the survey mentioned above, 52% shop online and 34% did not know how to identify an unsecured site. Just 49% correctly identified the unlocked padlock as the correct symbol. Unsecured sites could steal credit card details, access data, or force the download of malware that could steal patient data.
These are the two most common issues regarding data breach, demonstrating a critical lack of understanding of basic security and data protection in the workplace. The more employees you have, the higher the risk of a data breach. In these instances, it may be better to outsource your data retrieval and storage to remove the biggest challenge – unauthorized sharing of information.
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Shopping around for a record retrieval company is a real pain. Qualifying that you are getting the best coverage and up-to-date data security standards with your provider is key. One thing you may not have considered is if your record retrieval company keeps up with the statutory state medical record copy fees. With Record Grabber, we are diligent in ensuring we remain up to date to get our clients the best prices possible.
When a health care provider, law firm, health insurance company or other entity that may require regular access to patient data, you will pay for this service based on legal requirement. Organization service charges are subject to negotiation and tailored service. Part of that cost will include the statutory charge for accessing State Medical Records. Each state government is responsible for setting its own fees and these are subject to change. Unless the cost goes up significantly, you are unlikely to see much of a change in your provider fees, even when the cost goes down.
But keeping a regular check on what each state charges as a statutory fee for access can help save your organization money by reducing your costs. Cost calculations structure can even change. Some apply limits to the cost while others do not.
Each state in the US has its own costs. For example, Alabama state charges $1 per page for anything up to 25 pages. Anything beyond that is charged at $0.50c per page and a search fee of $5. In Pennsylvania, there is a search and retrieval fee of $21.69, a $1.46 charge for pages 1-20, $1.08 for pages 21-60 and $0.36 per page from page 61 onwards. This is just two states. Although most are simple and well-defined, it can be complex to navigate the total cost. What may seem like a simple costing is not necessarily the cheapest from your provider. That’s before you get to specific records such as x-rays, anything stored on microfiche or specialist data.
As with everything, it’s important to shop around and compare prices and level of service. It’s nice to not have any surprises when it comes to state medical record copy fees. Ensure that your medical record retrieval company is up to date.
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