Negotiating maximum cloud uptime from service providers

The meaning of the phrase health care cloud is evolving as the U.S. health care system expands its IT infrastructure. It can refer to patient Web portals, radiology image sharing, back-office Software as a Service (SaaS) for insurance billing and accounting applications, even patient care documentation contained in Google Docs and secured with third-party applications such as CloudLock Vault. If federal health IT leaders' dreams come true, it will also include a nationally connected health information exchange within a few years.

Right now, however, health care cloud typically refers to just one thing -- Web-based electronic health records (EHR) systems, hosted by a vendor.

Regardless of how an organization uses patient data within the cloud, uptime is the key to a successful implementation and continued usability. While some CIOs and physicians have expressed reservations about using cloud vendors, the ones that make the leap typically claim that a vendor's cloud uptime is better than the uptime they could provide themselves.

One such practitioner is Kevin McGovern, who runs his four McGovern Physical Therapy Associates clinics in northern Massachusetts with cloud-based EHR , accounting and billing systems. McGovern's not eligible for the federal program that provides financial incentives to hospitals and certain health care providers who adopt EHR systems. He switched to cloud services purely for business reasons.

Before moving to a cloud EHR system from WebPT Inc., McGovern had been running a server-based EHR over a wide area network . Not only was there downtime involved, but the EHR application slowed as more people logged in to work on patient records.

His new cloud vendor isn't perfect, but the situation is a vast improvement over the previous configuration.

"Sometimes there are uptime issues, especially when the West Coast wakes up," McGovern said. "Right about noon, when our clinicians maybe have a sandwich and start to do some notes and [West Coast users] start to treat patients, you'll see it slow down -- but I know [the vendor is] working on it.

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Negotiating maximum cloud uptime from service providers

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Accelarad?s SeeMyRadiology.com Provides Medical Image ...

Accelarad’s SeeMyRadiology.com Provides Medical Image Exchange Cloud Service for Kaiser Permanente, Georgia

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) September 15, 2010

Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, a division of the Kaiser Permanente national managed care organization, has selected Accelarad’s SeeMyRadiology.com(http://www.SeeMyRadiology.com) cloud-based imaging platform for the communication of imaging exams to their hospitalists and referring practices in Metro Atlanta. Using SeeMyRadiology.com’s single, comprehensive web portal, doctors–wherever located–will be able to access and view images over the Internet in full diagnostic quality. Kaiser Permanente also will use the advanced SeeMyRadiology.com cloud-based imaging platform, which requires no special client-side software, to manage and access all the images that enter the managed care system through the SeeMyRadiology.com portal(http://www.seemyradiology.com/features/cloud-computing)

 

The patient care arm of Kaiser Permanente, the Southeast Permanente Medical Group, Inc. comprises more than 20 facilities in Georgia, served by more than 300 physicians. Kaiser Permanente moves patients through a range of specialized medical facilities and hospitals to deliver the highest quality of specialized care in Georgia. Kaiser Permanente has routinely ranked in the top 15 health plans by U.S. News & World Report and has ranked as one of the nation’s top providers based on clinical quality data and NCQA accreditation scores.

 

“Finally, Kaiser Permanente has an efficient way to share medical images, eliminating the need for duplicate exams which can expose patients to unnecessary radiation, elevate health care costs and delay treatment,” said Accelarad CEO Willie Tillery.

 

About SeeMyRadiology.com

SeeMyRadiology.com, an Accelarad venture, is an online community for medical image exchange that is revolutionizing how imaging facilities, physicians, and patients store, share, and access medical images and reports. Via a cloud computing platform, SeeMyRadiology.com allows for easy collaboration and communication among health care providers and patients, dramatically improving access, costs, speed, and mobility of medical image exchange throughout the continuum of care. By fully complying with HIPAA privacy and security rules, SeeMyRadiology.


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