HIPAA Security Seminar Wednesday

We are holding a HIPAA Security seminar on Wednesday 9/29 at the Courtyard by Marriott in Waterbury. The seminar will begin at 8:30am and run until 12:30pm. We will be reviewing each requirement of the Security Rule which goes into effect 4/20/05. It will be an interactive session with practical solutions to implementing the requirements. The fee for Clients with active Support Contracts is $45.00 per person. The fee for all others is $85.00 per person. Further information is available at our office at 800-897-7002.

CMS 2004 ICD9's Need To Be Installed

For all our health care Clients: The 2004 CMS ICD9 updates have been released. These updates must be installed by October 1st, but should not be installed too long before then. Medicare requires that Final Claims contain the ICD codes of the RAPs. Any RAPs submitted on or after 10/1 must use the new codes.

We have the latest ICD9 files for our Misys and McKesson Clients. For those clients that we have VPN access to, we will install the updates on the evening of September 30th. We will notify you before we perform the installation. Questions can be referred to me at the office or via e-mail.

SP2 Proving To Be Interesting

As I have mentioned before, we have been testing Windows XP Service Pack 2 for some time now. Overall our experience has been good. However, we are finding some issues. For instance, SP2 breaks Norton Antivirus, both the retail and Corporate versions. There are patches for both products that correct the problem.

The built in Firewall and Pop Up blocker work fine but do cause some issues that some users may have problems with. Some Websites use Pop Ups as part of their site navigation. The user may get confused when things are not happening on a website that used to happen before. The problem is easily cured but may cause problems for some.

The problems we have seen with SP2 so far have been minor. However, we do expect more. We will begin testing at Client sites next week. So we'll see what happens!