Who is Consolo Services?

Consolo, is Latin meaning, ("to provide comfort"), we are an organization dedicated to provide

software and HIPAA compliant

solutions to Hospice programs.

The Consolo Management Team:

Greg Kite: CEO David Nicola: Marketing Director Andrew Coleman: System Architect

Volume 4 Issue 1

Quarterly Update

Summer 2010

Inside this issue: Inside this issue: Inside this issue:

The new website of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care project (link below) says that for 20 years, it has ―documented glaring variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States. The project uses Medi-care data to provide information and analysis about national, regional, and local markets, as well as hospitals and their affiliated physicians.‖ The new site has custom maps, grids, trend reports, charts and fact sheets, databases which allow maps, charts and tables to be cre-ated and downloaded for presentations, and search capabilities to compare entities such as states, hospitals, primary care service areas, etc. Also, a ―key issues‖ section provides infor-mation on ―Medicare spending, supply-sensitive care, preference-

sensitive care, the physician workforce, end-of-life care, racial disparities, accountable care or-ganizations and more.‖ The site also includes 14 years of archived media coverage. Downloadable files include crosswalk files de-fined by zip code, geographic boundary files, hospital performance reports by state and sys-tem, Medicare mortality rates, surgical and medi-cal discharge rates, measures of inpatient utiliza-tion in the last six months of life, Medicare reim-bursement measures, and hospital and physician capacity measures. (Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care Website, www.dartmouthatlas.org; Medical Futility Blog,4/22, medicalfutility.blogspot.com/2010/04/dartmouth-atlas-project-launches-new.html

Summer Daze Summer Daze Summer Daze Dartmouth Website 1

HIPPA Privacy 1

New HITECH Group Leader 2

Consolo Happenings 2

Follow these 3 tips when handling patient pri-vacy concerns at your organization. Compliance officers may think that they’ve dotted all of their i’s and crossed all of their t’s, but if they miss even a small piece of the privacy puzzle, they can compromise their entire system. Take a look at these three reminders concerning pro-tected health information (PHI) to ensure that your privacy program is on track: 1. Don’t Let Paper Get Lost in the Shuffle. You may think of patient privacy exclusively in terms of protecting electronic patient data, but paper files are just as likely to be compromised. ―With the advent of the HITECH changes, breaches occurring with paper records will be treated the same way as electronic data,‖ says Gregory Michaels, manager of security and com-pliance solutions at Blueprint Healthcare IT in Cranbury, N.J. ―Doctors may take paper records home as op-posed to USB keys, or they may take paper re-cords in their car with them to the office or hospi-tal, and obviously those things have the same value in terms of the information contained in them,‖ Michaels advises. Even in facilities where paper records are stored

securely, there’s still a chance that the informa-tion on them might be exposed. ―In some hospi-tals, the main medical record area is very well secured, but other departments may have ac-cess to records, take them from the room, and store them temporarily while using them, and may not be keeping them secure,‖ he says. ―Even if we can move to 50 or 60 percent of medical practices being fully electronic in the next few years, we’re still looking at a long time before paper is eliminated, so make sure any PHI stored on paper in your office is secure.‖ 2. Know That Patients Are Aware. You’ve asked patients to sign a HIPAA privacy form, now they’re content, right? Not necessarily. ―The HITECH Act imposed an affirmative obliga-tion on the government agency overseeing the HIPAA program to investigate compliance breaches,‖ says Michelle Wilcox DeBarge, a lawyer with Wiggin and Dana LLP in Hartford, CT. ―Previously it was driven by complaints only, but they now have an obligation to affirmatively audit and monitor.‖ In addition, the government has been hiring peo-ple to ensure compliance and will be providing education programs to the public, ―and we’re expecting a lot of awareness, and for patients to

be asking more questions about the use of their private health information going forward,‖ says Peter Courtway, chief information officer for Dan-bury Health Systems in Connecticut. ―There is also a provision under HITECH that will allow individuals who have been harmed by a breach to have a share in the proceeds of the penalties,‖ DeBarge says. ―We don’t have the details yet, but this is another reason that pa-tients will have incentive to pay attention.‖ 3. Don’t Forget the Front Lines. You may be compromising patient data in other ways besides electronic and paper breaches. Perform a walkthrough in your practice or organi-zation to ensure that no other leaks exist. According to one HIPAA expert, a compliance officer walked through her practice and was pleased to see that computer monitors at the front desk had been turned so that patients in the waiting area could not see the screens. However, upon going to the elevators, she realized that the monitors were viewable through the glass entryway, and that anyone in the building’s lobby could see the data. This article is an excerpt from the: Health Information Compliance Alert

Brush Up on HIPAA Privacy Compliance

Dartmouth Atlas, Launches New Website

444 Lewis Hargett Circle Suite 125-6 Lexington, KY 40503

Telephone: 877-846-5831 Fax: 866-539-3170

Email: sales@consoloservices.com

Customer support:

Email: support@consoloservices.com

Your Hospice software solutionYour Hospice software solution

Providing quality software Providing quality software solutions, allowing care solutions, allowing care

providers to focus on what providers to focus on what matters most. matters most.

Congratulations to Consolo CEO Greg Kite, he has been named the new NHPCO HITECH Regulatory Work Group Leader. Greg will be overseeing the HITECH end of the NHPCO’s Regulatory and Compliance Team. This Team is tasked with keeping Hospice Software compliant with the upcom-ing HITECH changes and potentially having influence on the proposed decisions. This is a ―watchdog‖ group for the Hospice community in gen-eral, as it relates to the E.H.R. and HITECH areas and new rules/regulations/incentives/programs/etc. Initially the following list of topics will be explored by the Team:

E.H.R. Policy/Procedures affecting Hospice HITECH Standards, Specifications and Criteria for E.H.R. CMS Incentive Programs directed toward Hospice

HITECH Requirements

The HITECH requirements became effective on February 17, 2010. HI-TECH stands for ―Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health‖ and calls for providers to update business associate contracts, breach notification, and other policies. The HITECH provisions—which are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009—codify and expand on many of the requirements contained in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) that protects the privacy and security of protected health information. HITECH changed the privacy and security landscape by imposing a direct legal obligation on the busi-ness associates of entities which are covered by HIPAA requirements (known as covered entities or CEs). Now, business associates of CEs must also comply with many new and existing requirements under the HI-PAA privacy and security regulations. Further, HITECH imposes new data breach notification obligations on both CEs and their business associates, and enhances enforcement authority with respect to HIPAA violations. To download the tip sheet, visit: http://www.nhpco.org/files/public/regulatory/HITECH_tip_sheet.pdf http://www.nhpco.org/files/public/newsline/2010/May_10_NL.pdf

Visit our Web site, it has a new design and layout, you may also now access the Demo site at the top of the home page, if you have privileges http://consoloservices.com/index.htm Last month Greg and David were interviewed by Carol Anderson of Anderson & Tuttle Home Health and Hospice Consultants, Carol gave Consolo rave reviews in the Software Reviews section of their Web site, and even added testimonials from current Consolo customers. You can follow her views about Consolo at Hospice Dedicated Software: http://andersontuttle.com/software/?p=25 Upcoming Release 3.0.2 Highlights of Planned Enhancements (August Release – Subject to Change)

Electronic IDG / Ongoing Comprehensive Assessment

Narrative Areas to Document

Ability to eSign

Ability to eFax

Stored within the Patient Home Page

Medication / Physician Orders Creation – Enhancing the Process

for more Efficiency

Medication Gantt Chart – Easily View the Impact of Medications

on the following:

Pain

Side Effects

Symptoms

Physicians Role – Creating Physicians as true Users with a Base

Role in Consolo to allow for future enhancements:

Physician Dashboard Alerts

eSignatures

Physician Section within the Patient Home Page

Hospice Pharmacia Interface

eSignature – Adding Functionality for the Mini-Assessments

Text Messaging Notification of Failed eFaxes

Pictured below, Consolo’s CEO Greg Kite

Conversing at this past April’s NHPCO Manage-ment and Leadership Conference. Congratulations are due also to iPad Winner— Micheal Hodges, IT Di-rector of Legacy Hospice, Inc. in Birmingham AL

New HITECH Group LeaderNew HITECH Group LeaderNew HITECH Group Leader

Consolo Highlights