While Halloween only comes around once a year, there are some truly frightful things happening in surgery centers around the country just about every day.
To get you in the Halloween spirit, the Client Services team at SourceMedical shares three terrifying tales of technology fails and some scary human behavior. Be forewarned, what you are about to read is real.
Eek, a Mouse!
The healthcare industry has long been perceived as lagging behind when it comes to technology. Despite the many advances that have been made, tragic tales of horrific user behavior continue to be told. For example, while conducting a training at a small surgery center in the Midwest, a gruesome scene was witnessed. At the start of the Windows training (the center was converting from a DOS system to a Windows-based product), the trainer spied an OR staff member attempting to use the mouse by manipulating it on the actual monitor screen itself, not the mouse pad. Now that is scary!
Beware of the Unknown
Ensuring clients have no outstanding A/R and are paid what they are owed per payer claim is a top priority for software providers. This means working extremely hard to solve and resolve every wicked issue in a timely manner; no bones (um, stones) are left unturned to achieve this goal. One client in particular was having a nightmare of a time obtaining claim payments from several payers. After spending countless hours working side by side with the facility administrator, and payers, more than one million dollars in outstanding A/R was reclaimed. Shockingly it was discovered a short time later that the administrator was the culprit behind this ghastly billing issue; the individual was arrested and deported for fraud and embezzlement. The moral of this grim tale, beware as some are not always who they appear to be!
Ghoulish Behavior
One of the benefits of technology is the convenience it offers, this includes providing secure access to information from virtually any location. For one remote biller, the convenience of being able to work from home quickly turned into a nightmare after it was discovered during troubleshooting that the biller's son accessed the center's server through her account. As if this ghastly situation wasn't frightful enough, the boy was using the center's server to host a Quake3 video game…gasp! In addition to exposing patient data, this horrific action violated HIPAA compliance. To avoid this ghoulish behavior, never stick a Post-it note with your user name and password on your computer as even networks that are well secured are only as strong as the user and password.
As if these stories weren't scary enough, there are more! Stay tuned for the next Terrifying Tales edition coming soon as SourceMedical's Client Services team has more tales to tell.
More articles on surgery centers:
12 ASCs making the news this month
Taking on progressive payment models: 3 ASCs offering bundled payment options
9 ASCs with total hip replacement programs
To get you in the Halloween spirit, the Client Services team at SourceMedical shares three terrifying tales of technology fails and some scary human behavior. Be forewarned, what you are about to read is real.
Eek, a Mouse!
The healthcare industry has long been perceived as lagging behind when it comes to technology. Despite the many advances that have been made, tragic tales of horrific user behavior continue to be told. For example, while conducting a training at a small surgery center in the Midwest, a gruesome scene was witnessed. At the start of the Windows training (the center was converting from a DOS system to a Windows-based product), the trainer spied an OR staff member attempting to use the mouse by manipulating it on the actual monitor screen itself, not the mouse pad. Now that is scary!
Beware of the Unknown
Ensuring clients have no outstanding A/R and are paid what they are owed per payer claim is a top priority for software providers. This means working extremely hard to solve and resolve every wicked issue in a timely manner; no bones (um, stones) are left unturned to achieve this goal. One client in particular was having a nightmare of a time obtaining claim payments from several payers. After spending countless hours working side by side with the facility administrator, and payers, more than one million dollars in outstanding A/R was reclaimed. Shockingly it was discovered a short time later that the administrator was the culprit behind this ghastly billing issue; the individual was arrested and deported for fraud and embezzlement. The moral of this grim tale, beware as some are not always who they appear to be!
Ghoulish Behavior
One of the benefits of technology is the convenience it offers, this includes providing secure access to information from virtually any location. For one remote biller, the convenience of being able to work from home quickly turned into a nightmare after it was discovered during troubleshooting that the biller's son accessed the center's server through her account. As if this ghastly situation wasn't frightful enough, the boy was using the center's server to host a Quake3 video game…gasp! In addition to exposing patient data, this horrific action violated HIPAA compliance. To avoid this ghoulish behavior, never stick a Post-it note with your user name and password on your computer as even networks that are well secured are only as strong as the user and password.
As if these stories weren't scary enough, there are more! Stay tuned for the next Terrifying Tales edition coming soon as SourceMedical's Client Services team has more tales to tell.
More articles on surgery centers:
12 ASCs making the news this month
Taking on progressive payment models: 3 ASCs offering bundled payment options
9 ASCs with total hip replacement programs