September 2017

NHA does not specialize in cybersecurity, but as we work to ensure our systems are safe and our staff members follow industry best practices, we wanted to share a few thoughts with you. Some of you may find this redundant, but, if any of you benefit from this information, it will be worth it.

Most breaches occur through phishing attempts. These are becoming increasingly sophisticated, spoofing email addresses from your internal leadership and recreating documents that appear to come from within your hospital. A training effort that teaches every user to be cautious, especially when clicking on links, should be the first priority. The second priority should be reducing the number of links in emails so that users do not routinely click on them. Third, instruct users to notify the information services department as soon as possible if they believe they’ve opened a phishing link, in order to potentially minimize the damage. Some folks fail to do so out of embarrassment, but you can often isolate and limit the impact if information services is made aware quickly enough.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) recently finalized new draft guidelines, substantially revising password security recommendations and significantly challenging many past best practices. Among their recommendations:

• Remove the periodic password change requirements. Not only does this frustrate end users, some studies suggest the practice may be counterproductive.
• Instead of complex algorithms, use easy to remember phrases. The chances of someone breaking a password goes down significantly with length. Therefore, a complex 6-character password is more likely to be broken than a 13-character (or longer) phase, such as IthinkNHAisbest (just for demonstration purposes!)
• Screen new passwords against lists of commonly used or compromised passwords.

It has been suggested to us that if you want end users to appreciate how risky their online social media can be, go to www.takethislollipop.com to see what hackers and other bad actors can see online.

MEDITECH has been focused on assisting its clients with avoiding cyberattacks. Here are two blog posts from Justin Armstrong, MEDITECH’s security analyst:

• MEDITECH’s Commitment to Security
• 5 Ways to Keep your EHR Data as Safe as your Patients

Finally, MEDITECH provides much more detailed resources on its Customer Information Security Portal and monthly Security Newsletter.

B. Hackers are going after humans not technologies. They are the weakest link in the chain.

Last month, we provided our first set of updates in a while to our KLAS rankings. In the past month, we have seen improvements in several of our scores and are now the top ranked MEDITECH READY-certified consulting company in all four categories where we are rated. As of September 1:

HIT Enterprise Implementation Leadership – 5^th
HIT Implementation Support and Staffing – 13^th
IT Advisory Services – 4^th
Technical Services – 7^th

Here is a recent testimonial from one of our 6.1 clients:

“We have long valued our partnership with NHA because of their commitment to excellence and collaborative relationship with MEDITECH. The knowledge, experience and confidence that our NHA consultants have brought to bear to our implementation – revenue cycle, health information management, materials management, ambulatory – are truly world class. The world of consulting would be challenged to find the quality of professionals we have here, working with us, to slay our MEDITECH 6.15 implementation. We believed this to be true during our MAGIC to 6.0 migration and our experiences with NHA in recent years have only gone to seal this as a fact, consistent and natural truth.” –  Audrey Parks, CIO, Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital

Visit our website to see our full library of client testimonials.

KLAS Comments – August 2017

“Navin, Haffty & Associates is the premier provider of MEDITECH services. Their folks are knowledgeable and professional. They are able to tie together various MEDITECH modules into productive workflows. They know operations and technology well and are able to marry that knowledge with extensive product knowledge, which yields great results. We always get great value from them.” – Executive

“When someone requests a report and we know it is something that is going to take a little bit of time, we give it to Navin Haffty. They create the report and give it back to us in a timely fashion. They have great turnaround times.” –  Director/Physician

“There is not any firm in the world better than Navin Haffty when it comes to understanding the MEDITECH environment.” – Director/Physician

• MEDITECH has posted “Your guide to the MACRA 2018 proposed ruling.”
• Check out MEDITECH’s blog on How to Optimize your Patient Portal for Meaningful Use Stage 3.
• MEDITECH to Integrate NCCN Chemotherapy Order Regimens into Web EHR” – In collaboration with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), MEDITECH will embed the NCCN Templates® as standard content within the Web EHR for actionable, integrated CPOE ordering, while also providing links to corresponding NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) for additional decision support.
• MEDITECH’s Web EHR Gives Citrus Valley the Tools to Transform Care” – MEDITECH recently announced that Citrus Valley Health Partners, West Covina, California, with three acute care hospitals, a home health program and nearly 1,000 physicians, has signed to migrate from MAGIC to 6.1. NHA is pleased to announce that we have been selected to serve as their READY implementation partner.
• NHA is pleased to announce we have also been selected by the following organizations for their upcoming projects:
  • Goshen Health, Goshen, Indiana – Client/Server to 6.16 Web Acute Implementation
  • Grand River Health, Rifle, Colorado – MAGIC to 6.16 Implementation, including Ambulatory
  • Kearney Regional Medical Center, Kearney, Nebraska – NextGen to 6.1 Implementation

If you haven’t seen our new website, be sure to check it out. Our new site went LIVE in July and is designed to better accommodate those of you who get information on your smartphones and tablets. We have streamlined the navigation and provided additional content that you may find useful. If you get a chance, visit us at www.navinhaffty.com.

Upcoming MEDITECH webinars (listed in Eastern time):

Optimize Your Revenue Cycle Management
September 26, 11:00 AM
Interested in preventing denials and enhancing revenue for your organization? See MEDITECH’s 6.1 Administrative and Patient Accounting solutions in action to learn how to proactively verify insurance, automatically capture charges, and enable billing in a timely manner.

EHR-enabled Clinical Quality Improvement
September 27, 11:00 AM
Learn how your organization can facilitate EHR-enabled electronic clinical quality improvement (eCQI) using toolkits that address top priorities like sepsis, CAUTI, and fall risk, built directly into MEDITECH’s Web EHR.

We are currently looking for candidates with implementation experience with MEDITECH’s 6.1 applications, with special interest in the AMB, RCG and SUR applications.

If you are interested, please contact us at recruiting@navinhaffty.com or call us at (855) 309-9334. See what positions are currently available by visiting the NHA Careers page.

Please note that at this time we are only able to consider those able to travel up to 80% of the time (also employees from MEDITECH and our clients cannot be considered).

If you are interested in exploring new positions at other organizations, visit the client job board section of our website. This is a free service of NHA to the MEDITECH community. Currently, there are many postings from MEDITECH organizations. If you or a colleague are interested, check out what’s open.

If you would like to include your organization’s listing on the NHA website, please email Patti Collins at pcollins@navinhaffty.com. Please note that as this is a courtesy to the MEDITECH community, we will not accept postings from recruiting companies.