Roger Steven's Blog – September 2017 Archive (6)

With HIPAA now being fully enforced and the government getting stricter and stricter about its implementation; practice or business or compliance officers need to be absolutely thorough about all the areas of HIPAA implementation. Given that there are enormous issues of risks that Covered Entities and their Business Associates need to address; the need to be fully aware of the changes that the Omnibus Rule has brought…

The introduction of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) has certainly brought about a major change in the way healthcare is administered in this vast country.

EHR's have evolved in a big way from the time they first came to be used in a moderate way in the healthcare industry a few decades ago. From then on, although the push towards making all health records online has been on -and the US economy saves close to $80 billion a year on paper and other aspects -the rate of penetration of…

For people on a job hunt, the reason for not offering one is almost invariably the same: You lack experience. How do you convince the organization that one can gain no experience unless one has a job? This is a typical chicken and egg conundrum: You are not given a job because you have no experience, and you have no  experience because you don't get a…

Food technology has been growing at a quick pace, having come under the influence of the twin paradigms of the late 20^th century, technology and globalization. As populations keep moving from one part of the world to another in the millions; it is natural that they get influenced by the food behavior of the place to which they move, while also bringing their own influences into it.

It is not just with the itinerant population that food service and movement are paired and…

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) is a federal Act that regulates the manner in which physicians have to be paid when they treat patients who come to them under Medicare. It modifies and supersedes the earlier legislation on this topic, namely the Balanced Budget Act, which was in force from 1997. 

From the time the Balanced Budget Act linked physician payments to budget cuts and economic growth; it has reduced physician payments by over a fifth. In…

Ransomware is dangerous and malicious software that infects the operating systems of computers that are vulnerable. It blocks access to files, and demands a ransom for releasing it. After the ransom is paid, usually in the form of virtual cash, through means such as Bitcoin, the block may be released. Many ransomware attacks, like ransom seekers in real life, blackmail and harass the victim for prolonged periods of time. Sometimes, ransomware can block the user’s access to the entire…