While a great deal of information has been released on how electronic health records (EHR) will be affected by the Cures Act regulations, there seems to be far less understanding about how the new requirements will affect practices. In this blog article, we will clarify how some of the new requirements will apply to your practice, even if you are not a MIPS participant, as well as how transitioning to the cloud from a server-based system will make complying with these regulations easier for your practice next year and into the future.

Here at Nextech, we are so excited to be back in person for EDGE 2022. In fact, general registration has begun and will remain open until the very last day of 2021. This means there is still plenty of time for you to convince your boss that going to EDGE is best idea ever and that you should totally be going.

Recent events have put a spotlight on a new element of payments security—terminals. For those readers who may not have been following the news, federal law enforcement (FBI) recently raided the Florida offices of PAX Technology, a leading, Chinese-based payment terminal provider. The raid was first reported by Krebs on Security. Based on the information we currently have, both the FBI and MI5 began investigating the firm after a major US payment processor started asking the vendor questions about network packets originating from PAX’s point-of-sale terminals. The vendor, it would appear, did not provide satisfactory answers which only increased suspicion and led the processor to report the situation to authorities.

The rise of social media has moved a lot of human interaction online, allowing us to reach each other without having ever met. For Ophthalmology practices, this means referrals are no longer something that come mostly from other ophthalmologists/physicians, as they traditionally have in the past. The truth is the vast majority of Ophthalmology practices are already aware that they need to be using social media and are currently using it. The question is whether or not they are using it properly.

Welcome back to the blog, ghouls and goblins! It’s almost Halloween once again, that time of year when we celebrate all things scary. Perhaps one of the scariest things going on right now is the fact that many specialty practices still believe that having an onsite server infrastructure is somehow faster and more secure than using cloud-based solutions. It’s not. In fact, it’s terrifying to think about how on-premise systems are still out there giving nightmares to specialty practices like a burn-scarred maniac with a bladed glove.

A year and a half ago, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world like a ton of bricks and caused a lot of people to do some pretty weird stuff. For example, people bought up all the soap and hand sanitizer they could find (okay, that one at least made some sense, considering the situation). And then there was that whole toilet paper panic buying thing (which did not make sense).

Well, folks… it’s that scary time of year once again. No, not Halloween. It may be October, but in this blog, we won’t be talking about ghouls and goblins. Nope. As you may already know, October is also Cybersecurity Awareness Month. And there are scarier things out there to worry about than those imaginary monsters in your closet.

In a recent blog article, we examined how your payments solution could be costing your practice more than you realize. In one section of that article, we touched briefly on the costs associated with point of sale (POS) hardware. And cost certainly remains an important factor. These terminals are not cheap, after all, and are commonly priced anywhere from $150 to $1000 dollars. However, when it comes to payment terminals, there is more at stake than simply just the up-front costs of purchasing the hardware.