Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 62)

IN THE OFFICE TIME-WASTER Instant messaging is the silent killer of productivity. But surely, you don’t want the instant ﬂow of information made possible by sophisticated cell phones to lead to high-risk scenarios like the one described above. You can minimize such risks by keeping and enforcing a few fundamental rules: • Always enable your cell phone’s “auto-lock” feature. Nearly all cell phones have a function that when activated requires users to enter a PIN to “unlock” the phone for use. Enable this feature and your cell phone is nothing but a paperweight to anyone other than yourself. • Report a missing cell phone immediately. If your cell phone is lost or stolen, call your cell phone carrier and have it disabled. If the phone turns up, you simply call back to have it reactivated. While this may not protect the data already stored on the phone, it will prevent unauthorized users from making calls and sending text messages. • Do not text message unique patient information such as dates of birth or Social Security numbers. A physician’s rounding list can simply consist of last names and room numbers. Omit any patient-speciﬁc data that is not absolutely critical. • The day you buy a cell phone, locate the carrier’s Web site, and create a new password for your account. If you already own a phone, log in today and do the same. • Password-protect all spreadsheets and Word documents containing conﬁdential data using the “pass- THE PERILS OF INSTANT MESSAGING word-enable” feature in your ofﬁce’s software application. • When in doubt, don’t hit the send button. If you think it may not be safe to send some bit of information to a phone, then don’t do it. 62 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | TECHNOLOGY GUIDE In our imaginary scenario, the frontdesk staffer was chatting with a friend using an instant messaging (IM) software client on her PC while also doing her work. Surely no harm could come from such an innocent use of IM, right? Wrong. Many large businesses (medical and otherwise) block the use of IM on their networks or run a “corporate” IM system that ﬁlters dangerous or non-work-related messages — for good reason. Instant messaging has its place, but you have to weigh its beneﬁts against its risks. Among the troubles IM in the workplace can cause: • A discreet waste of time: Instant messaging is the silent killer of productivity. IM clients on PCs can quietly eat away your staff’s time. “Not in my ofﬁce,” you say? It may be happening under your nose without your knowledge. For example, in an insurance processing area, it’s impossible to distinguish the keyboard clatter of billers busily posting payments for your practice versus billers typing out their favorite quotes from last night’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” to their friends on IM. Those little interruptions often grow from a few messages a day to cases in which staff may be spending up to half of their time chatting on IM. • PC security risks: Instant messaging software clients come under many names, but all of them present the same risk: they introduce a direct portal from the outside world straight into your computer network. While many IM software applications do a reasonable job of mitigating that risk, hackers ﬁnd ways to exploit security holes in IM systems all the time. Your ofﬁce PC, containing sensitive data, could be made more vulnerable to viruses, other malicious software, or even outright data theft or destruction — all through an access tunnel created by a simple piece of IM software installed on one of your ofﬁce’s computers. • Easy in/easy out concerns: How many of you have pasted something into a document, only to realize that what you pasted was not what you meant to paste, but something from earlier in the day, still stored on your computer’s clipboard? Now imagine that your ofﬁce’s transcriptionist is chatting on IM. Just as easily as something can come into your network, so can something go out. One inadvertent paste of conﬁdential text into an IM screen by a distracted transcriber can be a recipe for disaster. And once something is sent out via IM, it cannot be recalled. • “Under the radar” installation: While you may not have installed IM clients on your ofﬁce PCs yourself, don’t underestimate your staff. IM clients are easy to download and install by virtually anyone with any PC experience, and they often can be conﬁgured with “hot keys” that can hide an IM window quickly should a manager come near the monitor, making it difﬁcult to detect unauthorized use. As more and more useful technologies become available, the more vigilant you must be. Sophisticated cell phones, text messaging, and instant messaging are clearly here to stay. The question you must ask yourself is: Have I planned for the appropriate use of these technologies in my practice? • Jonathan McCallister is a client-site IT manager for a major healthcare consulting ﬁrm, and he is currently assigned to a 140-physician practice. He has worked in healthcare IT management for more than eight years and in general IT management for more than a decade. He can be reached via editor@physicianspractice.com. This article originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of Physicians Practice. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.