Dentaltown January 2015 - (Page 26)

practice management feature Count the Acronyms by Bryan Laskin, DDS L iving and practicing in the great state of Minnesota comes with some fun nuances. For example, we have the honor of paying a two-percent Minnesota Care Tax on all procedures which, as you might expect, mainly goes to help build roads. I guess that makes sense if you are a politician, and I guess I do like the convenience of having fancy roads so that patients can make it to our front door. But I digress. The latest feather in our Minnesota dental caps is that we get to be the ﬁrst state required to adopt a certiﬁed, interoperable electronic-health-record system (or EHR) by 2015, just like our pioneering physicians already have, in order to increase the level of care while reducing errors. innesota is often ﬁrst in all things fantastic and I'm sure this won't be the last time, which means that sooner or later we all will get to add to our list of acronyms (one so far. Count them with me). I've had a paperless practice for the last 10 years, so I actually agree that using EHRs will be better for everyone. It's hard to admit to those of you who prefer your paper charts, but it's true because, despite tradition, it is only a matter of time until we're all ﬁrmly entrenched in the st century, surrounded by wireless transmission of information, including sensitive health data. There are, however, a whole host of issues that come with storing your patient's health information electronically (ePHI). The second acronym we did not go to dental school to memorize- keep counting. The most basic ePHI rule pertains to how you store sensitive patient information. The vast majority of HIPAA data breaches don't actually come from hackers breaking into databases, as is commonly thought after all, how much proﬁt is there in looking into a stranger's gingival pocket depths? One would think those brilliant Eastern European hackers are going to start with banks, not your practice. (HIPAA is the third acronym-stick with me.) In truth, the largest risk is from people who have physical access to your patient data, either by stealing a USB, a hard drive or emailing information that is stored on a local server. So tell me, is there any possible way someone could grab your data? And do you know what will happen when they do? I know, I know, you are certain that a data breach will never happen to you and frankly you have way too many other ﬁres to put out today to care, like ﬁ ing the air compressor. But I'm telling you, it's time to care, because even if you don't, your patients and the media will. Alert the media Breaches have recently occurred in California, Pennsylvania and Texas. Each of these regular old dental-practices-next-door were burglarized. Their computers, full of unencrypted ePHI, were stolen. A loss like that makes it hard to open the practice the next day. Even worse, according to the law, both the media and patients must be notiﬁed when you have more than e I records. Do you have more than 500 patients? Yeah, so do I, and so did all three of these sad aforementioned examples. In the case of the Pennsylvania practice, 11,000 patient records were downloaded to IP addresses all over the world. Who knows what they will do with that information, but we deﬁ nitely know what your patients will do when they hear about it. While the ﬁ nes are heavy enough, it's the public-relations nightmare our examples above faced that is the real problem for all of us. If they had only encrypted their ePHI data, they would not have had to notify anyone. As it was, their reputations suffered. hat's tough to quantify. ll this suffering because the patient data was not encrypted. Why data encryption matters Encryption is the conversion of data such that it cannot be read without the correct key, usually a software-generated algorithm that automatically scrambles the data, thereby disguising your e I, which in turn protects your data against conﬁdentiality breaches or malicious intent. Simply put, it's putting information into a code that only you can decode. Under the newly enforced Health Information Technology for conomic and linical ealth ct I , our ﬁfth acronym for those still counting, all ePHI must be encrypted, whether at rest on a server, in transit down the hall of your practice or down the street to your friend's practice. This means you must understand data encryption and become compliant, or you'll be breaking the law every second of every day. As a bonus, though, continued on page 27 26 JANUARY 2015 » dentaltown.com http://www.dentaltown.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown January 2015

Dentaltown.com Highlights
Howard Speaks: Why Too Much Clinical Dentistry is Bad for Business
Professional Courtesy: Coming Soon: More Denture Patients
Continuing Education
Sleep Apnea Screening and Treatment
Data Encryption: Count the Acronyms
Anterior Tooth Position in Restorative Dentistry: Applying the Chasolen Triad
Poll
Office Visit: Texas Hygienist a Diva of Dings
What is the Current Science Behind Socket Grafting to Preserve Ridge Height?
Pulp Capping: Improving the Prognosis
Industry News
New Products
Should I Extract That Tooth?
Townie Meeting 2015 Preview
Ad Index
Remembering Suzanne Mann
Diagnosis in Endodontics
Quickbooks: Ten Tips to Stay Organized and Efficient
Dentally Incorrect

Dentaltown January 2015