Impact of Substance Abuse at healthcare primary level
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Practice Management
Practice Management
The importance of backing up your Medical Software Data
The importance of backing up your Medical Software Data
Its vitally important to safely backup your data, and when you are working with sensitive Medical Software data it becomes critical. Can you really afford to not have a secure backup copy of your data?
The vast majority of small-to-medium healthcare providers in South Africa use some form of medical software to run their practices.
As with any software out there, things do go wrong at times: data gets corrupted or deleted, hard drives crash or tape drives fail at the most inopportune time.
The sad reality is that many practices do not have backups, let alone business continuity in mind at all. They often leave backups on the back burner or backup erratically to questionable media. This lack of data security strategies can cost healthcare providers dearly.
Not all backups are created equal
It may be tempting to backup mission critical information to external media such as a flash disk due to perceived simplicity and cost-saving benefits, but this is a short sighted understanding of what a backup strategy entails.
For most practices, however, IT budgets are small to non-existent and the cost of backup hardware might be an off-putting factor.
It is, however, when it comes to data recovery that a cost-effective and comprehensive data backup solution proves to be invaluable.
Better Practice Management on average, helps at least 8 healthcare practices restore data each month.
Here are a few common reasons healthcare practices need data restoration:
- Data instability caused by updates
- Data hijacked by Ransomware and rendered unusable
- Hard drive crash due to load-shedding or other related issues
- IT equipment theft
- Accidental deletion
- Database corruption
Why choose Better Practice Management as your Medical Software Data Restorer?
Our longstanding role of serving the IT needs of healthcare service providers means we have an intimate understanding of how practices run, and their demands on IT systems. We are able to advise our customers on backup best practices.
Our relationship extends to outside recovery experts as well. With Medinol medical billing software, we understand the structure of the database and can advise on best recovery practices.
If needed, we provide after hours support to ensure our clients get their data assets back in place to ensure halthcare practice continuity.
Cloud is becoming an important backup medium
Cloud technology offers security, safety, mobility and affordability benefits simply not available in traditional backup solutions. Imminent POPI and other regulations will demand that you backup your data offsite and securely and if you do not comply you stand the risk of prosecution. More and more people are seeing the benefits that cloud Medical Software data backup can provide.
HPCSA Sets 2012 Tariffs for Private Doctors
What you should pay your GP
2012-08-12 10:00
Zinhle Mapumulo
Pricing of services in the private sector is abnormal and unacceptable, says Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has once again tried to set guidelines for what doctors in the private sector should charge – but its proposed fees may land it in hot water with the sector.
The guidelines outline what the council believes healthcare practitioners should charge patients for consultation, treatment and care.
Previous fee guidelines for the private sector have been booted aside in court or set aside in favour of newer documents.
The council says the new tariff guidelines are a fair interim measure that could end the current billing confusion in the private healthcare sector and protect patients from being overcharged.
But the South African Medical Association (SAMA) disagrees.
The association’s acting chairperson, Dr Mark Sonderup, said: “The new guidelines will create more problems than a solution because they are not realistic.
“The HPCSA met with us and other stakeholders last year to discuss the guidelines but it appears nothing we said was incorporated in the new guidelines.
“They failed to consider various factors that practitioners use when determining the tariffs, including the area they practise in.”
The HPCSA’s registrar, Dr Buyiswa Mjamba-Matshoba, explained: “The new tariff guidelines are not what doctors should charge but what they are expected to charge.
“The council is cognisant of the fact that practitioners have a right to charge fees commensurate with a number of factors such as their area of expertise, market segmentation of their client base and area in which they practise.
“However, the practitioner has a responsibility to inform the patient what he or she is charging, so that they can make an informed decision,” Mjamba-Matshoba said.
However, the council is planning to use the guidelines when adjudicating complaints of overcharging – so doctors will ultimately be held to them.
Most of the complaints the HPCSA receives each year from patients relate to overcharging.
The absence of tariff guidelines in South Africa’s private healthcare sector for the past two years has made it tough for the council to finalise these complaints.
The last private healthcare tariffs guideline was the National Health Reference Price List (NHRPL), which was declared invalid and set aside by the North Gauteng High Court in July 2010.
The court found that the processes relating to obtaining information, determining prices and publishing it were flawed, as not all stakeholders were
consulted.
Before that, there was the council’s ethical tariff guidelines, which were scrapped in 2008 when the NHRPL was published.
Sonderup said: “The new guidelines are taking the industry back to 2010. The R255 that the HPCSA expects GPs to charge is 10% below what they should be charging.
“We are disappointed by this whole exercise because it will take (us) back to (an) altercation that could have been prevented,” Sonderup said.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has announced that the long-awaited pricing commission, which will regulate the private health sector, will be established next year.
Motsoaledi revealed this when he addressed delegates at a Board of Healthcare Funders meeting in KwaZulu-Natal last week.
He said: “The pricing of services in the private sector is abnormal and unacceptable – it must change.”
The Board of Healthcare Funders, which represents more than 80% of South Africa’s medical schemes, welcomed the minister’s announcement.
Fact box
The HPCSA has proposed a number of new tariffs for doctors and other health professionals working in the private sector. These are the prices you, as a patient, can expect to pay if the tariffs are adopted:
» GP consultation: R255
» Completion of chronic med form: R322
» Pregnancy ultrasound: R444
» Normal delivery and obstetric care from beginning of labour until post-partum: R2629 plus R351
» Exclusive attendance to a baby after C-section or normal delivery: R496
» Pre-anaesthetic assessment: R240
» C-section and obstetric care from beginning of labour until post-partum: R2489 plus R351
– City Press
WCA Claims Back on Track
Get Help With Your WCA Claims
We’re back on track. As of now, we can once again take “old” WCA claims off your shoulders and have these handled for you. So if you’re sick and tired, and getting nowhere with your WCA claims, simply hand them to us and get paid within 8 weeks. Do contact us on (021) 906 2296 to make collection/delivery arrangements.
We already have a number of successful collections under our belt. With claims going as far back as 2002!
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Win a Plain Paper Fax Machine!
You know intimately what Medinol can do for your practice. Refer a colleague (Doctor or Dentist) and get paid a finders fee. Simply email their name, email and telephone to us, and we will get in touch. Do not forget to include your own name and email. Medinol Practice Management Software.
PLUS: Your name will be entered into a draw to Win a Plain Paper Fax Machine! valued at R2,995. The winner will be announced 9 December 2011. Good Luck.
Discovery Health Dental Rates 2014
Discovery Health’s Dental Rates and Benefits for 2014
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Click here for 2014 Dental Tariffs Pack
Discovery Health firmly holds the view that dentists should be appropriately remunerated and has consistently led the industry in the tariffs paid to dentists.
In 2014, we will increase the Discovery Health Rate by 6%. We are pleased to note that this is in excess of prevailing CPI at 5.5%.
We will publish the detailed rates on www.discovery.co.za from mid-December 2013.
We need place of service indicators on accounts
In 2011 we enhanced our dental benefits to allow funding of in-hospital dentistry from the Scheme’s risk pool, where the place of service indicator serves to trigger the payment from risk without the need to get authorisation. Please submit the following place of service indicators when applicable:
21 Inpatient Hospital
24 Day Clinical/Hospital
11 Consulting room
Please note that risk cover for members older than 13 years does not extend to basic dentistry in hospital such as fillings, root canal treatment and preventive treatments. These procedures are covered under the day-to-day benefit regardless of the place of service.