This has already been a wild year when it comes to data breaches, beginning with the hack of insurance giant Anthem back in February that compromised the personal data of 80 million clients. A month later, 11 million customers had their medical and financial details compromised in a cyberattack on Premera Blue Cross. Since then, things have only gotten worse.

Originally discussed in President Obama’s State of the Union speech back in January, the White House is now looking for the help of those in the medical industry to ensure the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) is a success. In the official blog of the Executive Branch, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy and Chief Data Scientist in the Office of Science and Technology Policy DJ Patil and PMI Project Manager Stephanie Devaney asked for the feedback of both the public and private sectors.

Within any medical practice, it is necessary to make electronic health records a part of all network systems, including practice management software. By enabling interoperability between different metric-tracking software platforms, office managers let physicians focus on their patients, rather than the process.

The world is more mobile than ever before and it now appears a greater number of physicians are doing the same in throughout the workday According to a new survey conducted by Black Book Market Research, 52 of ambulatory practice physicians currently access patient records or reference data from a mobile device. But the use of mobile devices doesn't stop there for ambulatory physicians.

How does your medical practice deal with its revenue cycle management? Working with the flow of money into and out of a practice is as important as providing proper care to patients. Without the funds, after all, a practice ceases to function. Thankfully, there are a lot of ways that organizations can improve their relationship with their revenue. Many groups take too long to collect, allow too many write-offs, or use technology that is unoptimized for collections. Some have a very high claim rate denial or fail to follow up on denied claims. Finding out how a given practice can improve its financial situation requires knowing exactly how it is failing to capitalize on available opportunities.

Due to the intricate nature of specialty physician practices, dissatisfaction among these doctors is often rooted in the implementation of a solution that’s not fit for their specialty or practice. With 77 percent of specialty physicians attesting to this issue, it’s no surprise that a recent survey conducted by AmericanEHR Partners and the American Medical Association (AMA) discovered EHR satisfaction is trending in a negative direction. Compared with a report in 2010, satisfaction among physicians has decreased from 61 percent to just 34 percent satisfaction in 2015.

Trying to organize your schedule of patient appointments can be a lot like driving with a cup of hot coffee between your thighs—it can be a refreshing pick-me-up when the cup is filled to a proper level. If the cup is too full, however, you’ll more than likely just get burned (not to mention you’ll have to spend the day with coffee stained pants). Okay, on second thought, that might not have been the best simile for this particular situation.

We’ve had a lot of discussions on this blog about how to keep your practice’s computers safe and secure. While performing regular cybersecurity tasks (such as keeping your antivirus software up-to-date) is undoubtedly important, there are also some other routine PC maintenance tasks that you should be performing in order to keep your practice’s computer running smoothly and efficiently.