Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Credits

Copyright

Publisher's Note

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Introduction

Who Should Read This Book

What’s Inside

Making It Meaningful

How to Contact the Authors

Chapter 1: Healthcare Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future

Healthcare Primer

Computer Use in Healthcare

Healthcare IT Lingo

Government Regulations

Workflows in Medical Practice

Keeping Current

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 2: Building Relationships and Continuing Education

MGMA

HIMSS

HITRUST

MS-HUG

Cisco Connected Health

CompTIA Health IT Community

Local Communities

Regional Extension Centers

Blogs Worth Reading

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 3: Healthcare Lingo

Medical Terminology

Color Codes

Healthcare Terminology

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 4: HIPAA Regulations

HIPAA Overview

HIPAA Elements

Title II: Administrative Simplification and Fraud Prevention

Electronic Data Interchange

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 5: HITECH Regulations

HITECH Background

Business Associates

Breach Notification

Penalties

Accounting of Disclosures

Minimum Necessary

Marketing and Sale of PHI

How HITECH Affects Different CE Scenarios

National Health Information Network

Personal Health Records

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 6: ARRA Funding

ARRA Background

EHR Adoption

Funding for Eligible Professionals

Funding and Eligibility for Hospitals

Medicaid Incentives

Meaningful Use: Stage 1

Proposed Meaningful Use Objectives: Stage 2 and Stage 3

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 7: PCI and Other Regulations

PCI-DSS

Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.0

California State Law SB 1386

Sarbanes–Oxley

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 8: Operational Workflow: Front Office

Medical Practice as a Business

Basic Workflow

Patient Impact

Keys to Successful Processes

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 9: Operational Workflow: Back Office

Revenue Management Cycle

Contracts

Medical Coding and Billing

HIPAA and EDI

Claims Process

Charge Creation

Collections Process

Third-Party Billing

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 10: Operational Workflow: Nursing

Nursing Process

Operational Workflow

Evidence-Based Practice

Nursing Technology Implementation

Nursing Technology Innovations

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 11: Operational Workflow: Clinician

Challenges

Needs of the Clinician

Point-of-Care Devices

Implementing the Right Technology

Remote Access

Continuing Education

Regional Extension Center

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 12: Clinical Applications

Maternal and Infant Care Systems

Radiology Information Systems

Picture Archiving and Communications System

Encounter Forms

Prescription Labels

Patient Eligibility

Third-Party Databases for Drugs

Third-Party Databases for Toxicology

Laboratory Systems

Disease Registries

Emergency Department Systems

Cardiology Systems

Clinical Decision Support Systems

Pharmacy Systems

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 13: Administrative Applications

Practice Management System

Accounting Applications

Payroll Systems

Single Sign-On

Email

Hosted vs. Local Solutions

Servers

Productivity Applications

Payer Portals

Phone Systems

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 14: Tying It All Together with Technology

Sizing a Practice

Network

Servers

Workstations

Regulatory Compliance

Deploying the EHR

Working with Physicians and Clinicians

Maintaining Sanity in Life

What’s in Our Toolkit?

Deployment Tasks Based on Practice Size

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Chapter 15: Selecting the Right EHR Vendor

High-Level Overview

Controlling the EHR Blues

Challenges of Deploying an EHR System

EHR Benefits

Pricing Models

Narrowing the Selection

Computing Model

Should You Partner with an EHR Vendor?

Standard Terms and Contract Language

Summing It Up

Terms to Know

Review Questions

Appendix: Answers to Review Questions

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Glossary

Index

Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo

Development Editor: Mary Ellen Schutz

Technical Editor: Patrick Conlan

Production Editor: Liz Britten

Copy Editor: Kim Wimpsett

Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Book Designer: Judy Fung

Compositor: Kate Kaminski, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Sheilah Lewidge; Word One, New York

Indexer: Ted Laux

Project Coordinator, Cover: Katherine Crocker

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: © Sarah Fix Photography Inc. /Getty Images

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-01676-3

ISBN: 978-1-118-20394-1 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-20396-5 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-20395-8 (ebk.)

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at (877) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011938576

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Health IT JumpStart. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at nedde@wiley.com. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

Best regards,

Neil Edde

Vice President and Publisher

Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

To our families, without whose love and support this book would not have been
possible.

—PW and SM

To Gina, the best spouse for life’s adventures. To Mom and Dad whose commitment to Christ, continuous learning, and lives of adventure were passed on to their kids and grandkids.

—PW

Acknowledgments

When writing a book, you always think about who you are going to personally thank. Well, they haven’t given us enough pages to do that for everyone, so we want to thank the following folks who have made a lasting impact on our lives.

Patrick Wilson would like to thank the following folks. The Burckhardt’s, Brown’s, and Boucher’s: You invested time praying and playing with the Wilson kids no matter how unique we were. Ernie Ruiz: With your guidance, we built so many projects together including a shuttle simulator for my eighth-grade science fair. Mike Wood and Mrs. Caetano: You made science a blast, literally. Doug Canby: No matter what crazy camp I wanted to go to, you would help me work with Rotary to find funding. Wayne and Sheila Wiebe: You let me participate as a member of your family and I am forever grateful. Mark Hayward: As my history and English teacher, you taught me that life is precious and to pursue my dreams (I still owe you that Volvo). Tina Darmohray: You instilled in me the drive to finish school. Your mentoring was instrumental in my career choices, and school has opened up many doors. Jennifer and Chris Stone, my flight instructors: You gave me the freedom of flight. JR Taylor, Denise Taylor, and Marty Martinez: you gave me the training necessary from day one to handle any parachute emergency. Pastor Verne: You have always been around to answer any philosophical question—or just to beat me at tennis. Dave Fry: Thank you for your ongoing mentoring in information security. Karon Head: thanks for all the help in keeping work interesting and fun. David Runt: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to grow at CCHS. Blythe and Bob at CompTIA: your ongoing support serves the entire HIT VAR community. Marc Miyashiro, Lance Mageno, and Earle Humphreys: Thank you for providing guidance on the many topics of healthcare IT. Lastly, thanks to all who have allowed me to participate in their lives; each experience has helped shape who I am today.

The accomplishments listed in my bio would not have been possible without unwavering support from my family, faith, parents, mentors, and business partner. Thanks to my wife, who endured long weekends, put up with calls from the editor hunting for me, and maintained the home front while I was working or writing. To my kids, who can now finally have the full attention of their father as they grow into adulthood. To my parents, who gave me space to be my own person. You had your hands full. I want to thank my pastors, who prayed and worked with me to maintain some semblance of balance in my life. Thanks to my Bible Study members, who pitched in and opened their home or led the group as I traveled. To my brother and sister, who supported me, even if their brother took a briefcase to school. Thanks to God, who gave us all unique abilities to serve and meet the needs of others.

Scott McEvoy would like to thank his lovely wife, Sharon, and his wonderful daughter, Patty, for their patience during this project and for providing the support necessary to enable him to complete this endeavor. He would also like to thank his colleagues, clients, current and previous co-workers, as well as friends for their contributions to this work.

And there are some folks we both would like to thank. We can’t leave out some of the wonderful staff at medical practices who have chosen to work with us. Patty and Michelle, not only are you awesome to work with, but you gave up precious time to give feedback on the book. Dr. Cook, Dr. Jacobs, Dr. Freinkel, Dr. Tremain, Dr. Pramanik, and Dr. Bronge: Each of you provided valuable feedback on the book’s content. The information you have shared will help so many other IT professionals and the practices they serve.

We would like to thank the good folks at Sybex and Wiley for giving us the opportunity to write this book. Pete Gaughan and Mariann Barsolo were instrumental in helping us with the concept and worked very hard to bring the concept to fruition. Without Mariann’s tireless effort, this book may not have gotten off the ground, much less made it to the printing presses. We also want to give a special thank you to our developmental editor, Mary Ellen Schutz, for her patience and skillful handling of these first-time authors. I can’t think of a better person to bird-dog me (PW) and keep me on task and point. Without her tutelage, this book would not be what it is—and our formatting errors would have certainly put us in mortal danger (the term hit men was used frequently) with the rest of the production team. That said, let us acknowledge and thank the rest of the production team, including our technical editor Patrick Conlan, production editor Liz Britten, copyeditor Kim Wimpsett, compositor Kate Kaminski, proofreader Sheilah Ledwidge, and indexer Ted Laux. Their efforts truly made an improvement and provided polish to the finished product.

About the Authors

Patrick Wilson has been intrigued by the amazing potential of technology, patient care, and customer service for more than a decade and has been passionate about computer applications for more than 32 years. His dad, an educator and blogger (www.grandadscience.com), brought home the first personal computer in the county when Patrick was just four years old. This early start fueled his lifelong passion for technology and also provided him with a keen understanding of both legacy systems and bleeding-edge technology. A 17-year veteran of the computer industry, Patrick currently serves as the assistant director of IT, security, and infrastructure for Contra Costa County Health Services (CCHS). CCHS consists of a 160-bed hospital, three large clinics, 25+ smaller clinics, a health plan, public health, hazardous materials, and environmental health. Previously, Patrick headed up the IT organizations for several Silicon Valley startups, including Global Network Manager, serving as the director of IT and CTO. In 2006, Patrick cofounded Vital Signs Technology, Inc. with Scott McEvoy, which serves the technology needs of small to midsized medical practices on the West Coast.

Patrick has a bachelor’s degree in business from Western Baptist College. He is a CISSP, MCSE + Security, CompTIA Security+, certified in Homeland Security CHS-I, and a Microsoft Small Business Specialist. He also has federal certifications from CERT and FEMA. Patrick lives in Northern California with his wonderful (and patient) wife and two awesome kids. His hobbies include spending quality time with his family, flying, and skydiving—of course, never both at the same time.

Scott McEvoy is a seasoned IT professional from the fast-paced startup world and has held a number of roles, including systems and network administrator, IT manager, and senior director of World Wide Information Systems. As the director of IT at Vitria Technology (Red Herring: Number 2 in their Digital Universe Top 50 Private Companies of 1999), he helped the company grow the employee base from 50 to more than 1,500 in a little over two years. Tiring of Silicon Valley, Scott took his leadership skills and his passion for a good wine to Jackson Enterprises where he directed the IT Operations team of Kendall-Jackson for the corporate headquarters, affiliated wineries, and distributors. In 2006, Scott cofounded Vital Signs Technology with Patrick Wilson and set out to develop technology solutions targeting healthcare and emerging technology companies. He is among a limited number of healthcare professionals in the United States who has a CPHIMS certification. He has installed EMRs from single-doctor practices to multi-site medical groups. His early involvement with a public health record company has allowed them to grow with reduced security risks to the patient data in the organization’s custody.

Scott has a bachelor of business administration degree in MIS from Pace University, as well as a number of vendor certifications from nearly all major technology companies including Microsoft, Cisco, Juniper, and CPHIMS. Scott lives in Northern California with his lovely wife and daughter. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking and hiking with his family, SCUBA diving, practicing karate, and participating in his daughter’s school activities.

Introduction

Let’s take a second to thank you for embarking on this journey with us. We hope that the subject matter and content provided in this book will have a positive impact on your career, employer, and patients served by the work you accomplish. Businesses are in dire need of trained professionals who understand the healthcare delivery system and healthcare technology, and we expect this book to help those looking to enter that market. At publication time, government calculations on labor project that there will be a 30.3 percent increase in healthcare jobs: physicians, nurses, technologists, administrators, and IT staff. In other words, the increase is expected to add 4.7 million new healthcare jobs by 2014 (www.bls.gov/oco/oc01002.htm).

Where are all the jobs coming from? Well, recent regulations stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the ARRA stimulus bill) are a significant driver for the rapid push for developing competent IT professionals focused on Health IT, also known as Healthcare IT. The federal government is expected to invest $27.3 billion, and the private sector will invest nearly twice that amount to meet the stimulus reimbursement requirements. Later, we will dive into the technical details of the stimulus funding, but for now we just want to share that the funding is broken into three different phases, each requiring different electronic health record (EHR) capabilities and reporting requirements. The requirements to meet reimbursement, which significantly impact technology purchase decisions, are not yet finalized; therefore, it is necessary to have trained staff members who can anticipate the expected regulations and implement robust solutions. Nearly two-thirds of the regulations have not yet been developed to meet the reimbursement requirements by 2015. Even as we go to press, the head of the Office of the National Coordinator was expected to agree to delay phase 2 requirements for ARRA funding by two years until 2014.

With the government funding part of the EHR deployment, many physicians, private practices, and hospitals are utilizing that funding to radically change how care is delivered. In the not-so-distant past, a physician would appear in the exam room with a chart in one hand and a pen in another. With the new funding and implementation of an EHR, those days are soon to be but fond memories. Medical practices, hospitals, and long-term healthcare providers are businesses, and most businesses (excluding nonprofits) are created to make a profit. Businesses expect a long-term improvement in patient outcomes and a lower cost of service delivery. Additionally, medical practitioner reimbursements are being reduced by payor organizations such as Medicare, Aetna, and HMOs. Technology, though a cost to the organization, is expected to drive down costs by reducing waste (such as repeated labs and incomplete image studies) and increasing the visibility of care across all locations a patient receives care. Lastly, patients now expect access to their health information so they can make more informed decisions, track medication usage, and provide home care.

The federal Medicare program will start penalizing doctors financially for not utilizing electronic health records (EHR) by 2015. However, given the complexity, the lack of trained implementers, and the criticality of patient care, the jury is still out on what the adoption rate for an EMR will be. Some doctors are electing to stop taking Medicare patients, set themselves up for retirement, or possibly go into a true private practice where patients pay a fee for the service delivered. No matter how many medical practices adopt EMR systems, it is clear that there are not enough properly trained staff to support the number of future implementations. An opportunity of epic proportions awaits those willing to learn about the intersection of healthcare and technology.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for anyone who wants to learn about healthcare IT, medical workflow, and regulatory compliance in healthcare, including:

IT professionals who are looking to leverage their existing knowledge and expand into healthcare

Students who want to explore the technical aspects of healthcare delivery

Medical office managers who want to know about IT and regulatory compliance

Healthcare professionals who want to expand their role in the medical practice

We did not write the book from the perspective of teaching the reader how to paddle but rather how to take the right line down the rapids—and what to do if your raft takes on too much water. As such, it is most beneficial if you have at least a basic understanding of network, system, and hardware technologies.

What’s Inside

Here is a glance at what’s in each chapter:

Chapter 1: Healthcare Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future begins with a look back at the healthcare environment and the events and technological advances that helped shape our current healthcare delivery system. We introduce terms and concepts such as business associate, meaningful use, provider, and payer that are referenced throughout this book.

Chapter 2: Building Relationships and Continuing Education provides insight into resources, such as associations, user groups, communities, and organizations, that are useful in learning about healthcare and making connections within the industry.

Chapter 3: Healthcare Lingo introduces medical terminology and the acronyms commonly used in healthcare environments. At the end of this chapter you will know WHO, MA, PA, PACS, CAH, and many more terms.

Chapter 4: HIPAA Regulations covers the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 in depth and helps lay a foundation for understanding one of the most important regulations in healthcare.

Chapter 5: HITECH Regulations provides an in-depth discussion of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act and includes the information that is necessary to keep you and your clients from running afoul of the law.

Chapter 6: ARRA Funding covers the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that is fueling the nation’s investment in electronic medical and health records (EMR/EHR) and the requirements that are necessary for demonstrating meaningful use of those records in order to collect on these funds.

Chapter 7: PCI and Other Regulations examines additional regulations affecting the healthcare industry, imposed by credit card companies, as well as state and federal governments, to ensure that personally identifiable information remains secure and protected.

Chapter 8: Operational Workflow: Front Office provides insight into a medical practice’s day-to-day business operations. In this chapter, we discuss the basic workflow involved in a patient visit and the impact it has on patient satisfaction and business operations.

Chapter 9: Operational Workflow: Back Office discusses the administrative functions of the medical practice. These functions include the billing, coding, claims, and collections processes that are so important to the viability of the medical practice.

Chapter 10: Operational Workflow: Nursing looks at the clinical workflow from the nursing perspective and the impact that technology has on patient care. We also look at key concepts and technologies that are shaping the future of nursing.

Chapter 11: Operational Workflow: Clinician provides perspective into the medical practices workflow from a physician’s perspective. In this chapter, we examine the challenges and complications that impact the physician, which in due course impact the entire organization.

Chapter 12: Clinical Applications provides an overview of the clinical and diagnostic applications commonly found in a medical practice and includes a discussion of the technical nuances of supporting these applications.

Chapter 13: Administrative Applications discusses the nonclinical applications that are critical to the business and the impact these applications have on operational efficiency.

Chapter 14: Tying It All Together with Technology is a practical discussion of what it takes to successfully deploy technology solutions in a medical practice, taking into account technical challenges, regulatory compliance, and interactions in a healthcare environment.

Chapter 15: Selecting the Right EHR Vendor discusses the challenges of the EHR selection process, as well as strategies for helping your client make an informed technical and business decision when selecting an EHR system.

Making It Meaningful

When working in healthcare, you will come to realize that very few practices are alike. Many practices, however, face the same struggles. Some of the struggles are based on the size of the medical practice, the number of offices, and how the entity receives their funding. To drive home these differences, we have built a few case studies that will be referenced throughout the book. Spend time becoming familiar with each scenario. The scenarios illustrate how healthcare IT is delivered differently based upon the end user. Understanding how to implement protections for a small office with a single physician is different than understanding how to secure a small hospital. To help guide those thoughts, we created three fictitious healthcare businesses, which will be used throughout the book. The entities are made up, but the scenarios and solutions are based on our experience and expertise.

Dr. Multisite This scenario presents a single physician with three offices; one office is owned, and two are shared spaces. As an allergist, he has to have access to refrigerators at each location to house the vials for shots. The offices are open every day, but he is on premise one full day a week in the two remote locations and three days in the main office. He has nursing staff at each site. They borrow Internet connectivity from the two shared spaces, and he travels with the WiFi access point to save money on purchasing a second.

Middleton Pediatrics This midsized medical practice has ten physicians, five office locations, a dated infrastructure, and a 30 percent employee turnover, and it is still on paper charts. Email access is through an internal Exchange Server running on Small Business Server. The system acts as their firewall as well. The five office locations are connected via IPSec VPN tunnels, and the server acts as their authentication machine for the workstations using Active Directory. They currently provide access to their patients using a DSL connection straight to the Internet without any security.

North Community Hospital and Clinics The acute-care facility has 160 beds audited by the Joint Commission, and they have an emergency room (ER). They have an IT staff of 50 to support the hospital and 30 ambulatory care facilities. The facilities are located in under-served and high-crime areas. The security of the PCs in the exam rooms is questionable. The larger clinics have armed security officers. The hospital has a lab, radiology, intensive care unit (ICU), post-anesthesiology care unit (PACU), ER, and six operating rooms. They are looking to consolidate their 14 business applications into a single system, which will allow portal access to patients and community providers. Their timeline is 18 months for installation. They have no wireless infrastructure, and a third of their computers are too old to handle the new system.

We look forward to using the scenarios throughout the chapters to help you learn valuable lessons about the various ways that technology and services are delivered. We do caution that these are scenarios and should be used only as guidance when providing IT services to a similar-sized entity. We also include terms-to-know and review questions which we hope will help you gauge your understanding of the material.

How to Contact the Authors

We welcome your feedback about this book or about books you’d like to see from us in the future. You can reach us by writing to info@hitjumpstart.com. For more information, visit our website at www.hitjumpstart.com, “like”our Facebook page (HIT JumpStart), or follow us on Twitter (@hitjumpstart) or LinkedIn (HIT JumpStart).

Sybex strives to keep you supplied with the latest tools and information you need for your work. Please check the book update page at www.sybex.com/go/healthitjumpstart. We’ll post additional content and updates that supplement this book should the need arise.

Chapter 1

Healthcare Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future

Healthcare primer

Computer use in healthcare

Healthcare IT lingo

Government regulations

Workflows in medical practice

Keeping current

You are about to embark on a journey that is more fluid and dynamic than rafting down the class 5 Kern River (recently voted the most dangerous white-water rapids in the United States). With regulatory compliance changing annually and new technologies available daily, navigating healthcare technology is a bit of a challenge. We are honored to be your guides down this class 5 river. Taking the time to pick up this book shows your commitment to learning and drastically increases your odds of success.

This chapter provides you with a solid foundation and shows where you are headed on this journey. Understanding how the healthcare ecosystem has taken shape over the centuries, today’s challenges, and finally what the future holds is the goal of this chapter. As a primer to healthcare, it introduces you to the way computers are used in healthcare, the unique lingo of healthcare, government regulations that affect how our care delivery system works, and medical practices workflows.

Healthcare Primer

History is not just for liberal arts majors. Understanding how the healthcare vertical has matured from guessing about how our bodies work to mapping the human body will give you an appreciation for the advances made in the past century. These technical advances are just the beginning of what we can expect in the future with the help of knowledgeable professionals such as you. Add to this the fact that moral obligation and biblical integrity concepts permeate the fiber of the medical profession, and you will begin to understand why this brief introduction to the history and core values of modern medicine are vital to your ability to work effectively in healthcare IT.

Pre-twentieth Century Healthcare

History demonstrates that patient care has come a long way since early civilizations such as the Egyptians, all the way to the time of Napoleon and his advancement into the Russian winter with hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Early Egyptian medicine is considered to have started circa 3,000 B.C. The Egyptians continued to advance the practice of medicine through 600 A.D. The earliest recorded physician was Hesy-Ra, an Egyptian who practiced in about 2700 B.C. and served King Dojser. Medical practices at the time were based on the flow of the Nile. The body was deemed to have channels that carried air, water, and blood throughout the body. Egyptian physicians followed washing protocols to keep themselves healthy. In a 1973 study, the British found that more than 60 percent of the pharmaceuticals given to early Egyptian patients had a positive effect.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!