EMR Project Plan Helps

Two guides for small physician practices by Outlook Associates in CA: Selecting an EMR System, Implementing an EMR System.

Emedikon Solutions: Recession Proof your Medical Practice and EMR Implementation Guide.

Medical Software Guide: EMR/EHR Software Implementation and EMR/EHR for the Smaller Practice.

A very insightful blog by The Healthcare IT Guy.
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Ambulatory EHR Implementation

Here's an excellent artile on Ambulatory EHR implementation:

http://www.himss.org/asp/contentredirector.asp?contentid=67208
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Imprivata For Single Sign On

If the medical community hopes to build an interoperable network of accessible EMR depositories spread across many medical offices, at some point they will face the issue of security and identify managment. How many sign-ons screens will a person have to navigate?

A company named Imprivata offers an identity management and single sign on solution designed to let seperate systems interoperate with a singe sign on solution.


Read more at their website: http://www.imprivata.com




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Freeware Syncronization Software

I love this software! Click Here for the website. If you need to sync files between a PC and an external drive, or between two PCs, this is a great little freeware utility. I've had a lot of success with it over the years. It's simple and it just works.







From the website:

One synchronization software provides all these solutions

Sync data between your desktop PC and laptop (notebook).
Replicate and back-up data between your home and office computers.
Synchronize more than two directories.
Update and back-up files over a local network or the Internet.
Synchronize removable devices (USB key, flash drive, CDRW) with a local drive. Get both the performance of local drives and the mobility of removable drives. USB key lost or damaged? Your local drive always has an up-to-date copy. Hard drive crash? Your removable drive has the most current version of all your critical data.


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FBI Warns of Increase Computer Security Risks

Everyone who does any online banking should go to the following FBI website press release to read the following brief but important warning just released by the FBI regarding cyber-crime: Fraudulent Automated Clearing House (ACH) Transfers Connected to Malware and Work-at-Home Scams.

Then read a recent Reuter's report by Deborah Cohen entitled Small Firms More Susceptible to Cyber Crime.

In my professional experience as an IT support person working for small businesses, I can attest that cyber security among small businesses is not usually a priority, not because they don't care, but because they don't understand the threat or the simple steps they can take to secure their critical data.

Here are some tips:

1) Use Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware software and keep the subscriptions up to date. I've never had to clean viruses from computers with up-to-date Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware. There are a bunch of good ones out there. Pick one and use it.

2) Consider a commercial email and web filtering solution like Message Labs. Check out their SMB package Here. This is a service that filters your email and web content before it even gets to your office. Prices usually start around $5 a user or less per month.

3) Password protect everything, especially your wireless networks and routers. And use secure passwords!

4) Keep your software up-to-date. Hackers find new security holes all the time. But if you keep up with software updates, your risks of being compromised are drastically reduced.

Now that's not too hard! A little precaution goes a long way.

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Email Marketing Solutions

If you are familiar with email marketing, then you are familiar with Constant Contact. If you're feeling cramped with Constant Contacts features and want a little more power, check out StreamSend.

Their plans are pretty affordable. Whereas CC charges for blocks of contact slots, Stream Send charges by blocks of email slots. But it looks like CC is less expensive if you email multiple times per month.

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8 Steps To a Successful EMR Implementation

An article gloStream CEO Mike Sappington, found here, describes eight key areas for a successful EMR implementation.

I'm considering offering gloStream as a solution for local practices. However, there is a 'buy-in' fee I'll have to pay to become a partner-provider. Also, gloStream is not a big player on the national scene. Being a Michigan based company, there are no partners or clients in Tennessee as of yet.

What would be great is an EMR experience event, where vendors came and showcased their products and let doctor's and practices 'walk through' a couple of simulated encounters!

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Electronics Health Record Vendor Reports

Electronic Health Record technology is a really hot item right now. The federal government has set a goal of for all medical records in the US to be digitized and indexed by 2014. "But today, only 8 percent of the nation's 5,000 hospitals and 17 percent of its 800,000 physicians are using computerized record-keeping systems" (Health IT: An Rx for Health Care).

The American Academy of Neurology Professional Association has produced a report on electronic health record vendors every year since 2006.

2006 Electronic Health Records Vendor Report
2007 Electronic Health Records Vendor Report
2008 Electronic Health Records Vendor Report

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Awesome Notebook Wireless Mouse

Microsoft makes terrific mice. Here's a great one for notebook warriors who hate using touch pads, the Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000.


The USB wireless transmitter is tiny. You can plug into a USB port on your notebook and leave it there forever, unlike those inch-or-more-long transmitters.

As of this posting, Dell home has the Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000 for $29.99, +tax, and free shipping. Click here to search for the best price right now.

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Data Backups and Disaster Recovery

90% of businesses that suffer catastrophic data loss are out of business within two years. And no hard drive will last forever. Every hard drive has a failure point somewhere in the future.

But for every size of business there is a great backup and disaster recovery solution.

For single computer backups, I like the Fantom GForce II. Go to http://www.newegg.com and search for GFII1000EU. Use the NTI Shadow backup software included with the drive. Get two and rotate them every Monday. You’ve got to keep one of them offsite! That’s the whole point of a backup. Fire or theft will put you out of business otherwise!

You can also use an online backup solution like the one at http://www.carbonite.com that you might have heard about on the radio. This is a good choice for home based businesses that only have to backup 2-6 GB of data every night.

But a business with one or more servers needs a proper backup and disaster recovery solution.

Check out Yosemite Backup at http://www.barracudaware.com for a one-fixed-price-for-everything software solution. I’ve used this and it’s great! If you use tapes and agents you really need to check this out. You pay one price for all the agents you need.

There are also some great managed backup appliances. These appliances can backup multiple servers and keep offsite copies for serious disasters.

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CRM Software for Small Business Drives Revenue

Customer Relationship Management software automates a business’ sales and marketing process.

Do you know the process that turns your leads into prospects and your prospects into paying clients? Are your sales people organized around this process? Do they spend their time moving viable leads and prospects through the process of buying or do they spin their wheels on unproductive and unprofitable activities?

CRM software is a key ingredient for answering these critical business questions and accelerating revenue.

The most popular but least effective way for a small business to manage customer relationships is with Microsoft Outlook. But Outlook is not a CRM in any shape or form.

The second most popular CRM solution is ACT! Check them out at http://www.act.com for more information. This is real software that you install and maintain on your computers. Running software on your own computers is now called ground computing.

The third most popular CRM solution for small business is the internet-based SalesForce.com. Check them out at http://www.salesforce.com for more information. This is software to which you subscribe and use from your web browser over the internet. Running software on the internet is called cloud computing.

ACT! and SalesForce.com are true CRM solutions and they can really help you grow your bottom line. In the coming super-competitive economy (hey, we’re there already!), CRM solutions are a necessity.

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Speed Up Your Computer

Add more RAM if you have less than 1GB. This is the single biggest improvement you can make to your computer, and it will definitely lengthen the computer’s lifespan.

Set your anti-virus scanner to run when you’re doing the least work. Set Full Scan to once a week. If it’s set to run at night and you turn your computer off at night, guess when it will start to run? When you next turn on your computer!

Upgrade or remove Norton 360. It can bring a computer to a grinding halt! The latest version is pretty good but the older versions of most Norton products are speed killers!

Get rid of all the spyware and malware on your system. There’s a pretty good free anti-malware program at http:// www.malwarebytes.org that will clean up your computer.

Uninstall those programs you don’t use anymore. Go to >Start >Control Panel >Add/Remove Programs (or >Programs for Vista and Windows 7). Be careful!!!

Run Disk Cleanup and Defrag. You’ll find these tools by navigating to >Start >Programs >Accessories >System Tools. Run Disk Cleanup first and Defrag second.

Sometimes browser tool bars can slow things down a lot. And that WeatherBug add in that runs in the bottom right corner of your screen is definitely slowing things down!

Upgrade Vista to Windows 7. It really is faster.

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Five Tips To Save You Money On A New Computer

Did you know that computer stores mark their computer prices down really low but mark their computer accessory prices up really high? And have you ever felt 'pressured' to buy some of those extras? It can send the final cost of your computer through the roof! The base computer itself is what retailers call a 'loss leader'. Stores break even or lose money on it. Their profits are in all the other stuff that gets added on before you get to the check out page or counter.

It's no surprise that the store puts a lot of pressure on you to buy all of that extra stuff. What's a consumer to do?

Here are my five tips for keeping that final price low...

1) Buy your accessories at the online superstore NewEgg or Amazon. While shopping, make a list of the stuff you'd like to add to your system. But just buy the base computer from the computer retailer. For example, a USB cable that costs $25 at a popular brick-and-mortar retailer only costs $4.50 at Amazon. Five or six of these add-ons really adds up!

2) If you need Microsoft Office, think really hard about getting Office Basic. Online stores sell Office Basic bundled with the computer for about $140. It has Outlook, Word, and Excel. Do you really need powerpoint on all of your computers? Of course you don't. Then don't waste your money with Office Professional. You can get a free PowerPoint viewer from Microsoft. You only need the real PowerPoint if you want to create presentations. If you don't use it regularly, wait and buy it when you need it.

3) Don't over buy on your hardware, especially on the CPU. Unless you absolutely KNOW that you need certain hardware, don't buy the fastest. Shop somewhere near the bottom, but not the very bottom. Look at the range of systems and get something in the lower middle tier. That's where the value sweet-spot is. If I were going to add more powerful hardware, I would add more RAM.

4) If you are a home user, get the home premium version of Windows 7. Don't get Windows Basic!! If you're a business, get the professional version of Windows 7 (on behalf of the guy/gal that will have to work on your computer network one day, please don't get a home version!). Unless you know that you need Ultimate, don't get it. This is one tip that might add to the final price up front but will give you a lot more value from your computer in the long run.

5) Careful with that warranty! Most users go for the 3 year warranty. Unless you compute in a hazzardous environment, you're safe getting a 1 year next business day warranty. If a computer component is going to break, it's going to break in the first 90 days or after about 5 years. You are going to pay $150 more for a three warranty than for a 1 year warranty because of a 3% chance that you will need a $250 repair. With all the computers you're going to buy in your lifetime, you'll beat the odds by staying with the 1-year warranty!

OK, some of these tips should be rubbing against your reason and intuition. Good! Computer retailers have spent a lot of money and research to get you to spend, spend, spend. It takes some effort to resist!

To summarize, buy what you need now, don't buy for the mights and the possibilities in the future! Figure out what you need first then go shopping and stick to your list. The stores want you to think that it's cheaper to buy it now rather than later. It's ALWAYS cheapest to buy only what you need when you need it.

This is my philosophy and I've saved my clients tens of thousands of dollars this year! If you want more specific help and advice, email me! It's free! Tim [at] HolstonIT.Net.



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Best Deals on Desktops and Notebooks

"Where can I get the best prices on Dell and HP computers?" For home and small business users, the best place I've found is TechBargains.com. They have the latest deals for the most popular computer configurations. If you stick to their suggestions, you won't waste a lot of money on all those 'extras' that Dell and HP always try to sell you. You can also check out my article, 'Five Ways to Save Money On Your New Computer.'

And if you're a small business, call Holston IT and we'll help you pick the right systems and quote you a Dell package with financing for the same prices you'd get online. Call 423/534-3418 or email Tim [at] HolstonIT.Net.
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Meredith Kids On Roan Mountain

Sylvia (10), Peter (8), Nicholas (6)
Robbie (0.5), Sam (3), Tom (5)

Roan Mountain State Park is our favorite campground in Tennessee. After taking this picture, we all climbed the hill in the background.

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Why do I use [at] for my email address instead of @ on websites?

Have you ever wondered how so many spammers get your email address? One place they look is on websites. There are millions of web-robots crawling the internet looking for email addresses. If you have an email address listed on your web page, these web robots will find it and add it to their list given enough time.

And if you put the address in a clickable "mailto:" link, they're sure to find it.

Now I know pefectly well that spammers will get my email from others places, but listing my address with the [at] has definitely helped. In the grand scheme of things, I don't suppose it matters all that much, it's just a geeky kind of thing to do.

Of course you don't have to do this for printed material, just web pages!

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