About: Madelyn Young

Data thieves break into a small-town doctor’s system. They use advanced hacking methods to not only gain access to the healthcare information inside it, but make that data completely inaccessible for the provider. They steal the protected health information of the physicians’ patients, encrypt it, and post an electronic ransom note demanding that the doctor pay up to get the data back.

Gripping, right? It sounds like the plot of an action movie. I’d watch that.

But if the above scenario were to play out in movie form, the first words on big screens in theaters would be ‘Based on a True Story,’ because the tale of ‘Electronic Medical Records for Ransom’ actually took place earlier this year.

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Earlier this year, surprising news surfaced regarding a report on the health inequities in the San Joaquin Valley, a region in central California. Researchers found that based on the ZIP code of an area resident, his or her life expectancy could vary by as much as 21 years – a drastic amount.

But according to Patrick J. Geraghty, Chairman and CEO of Florida Blue (the state’s arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield) Florida’s disparities are even worse than the Valley’s.

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It’s that time of year again, when students and teachers head back to the classroom after eight to ten weeks off. For me, this late August period always invokes two distinct feelings: nostalgia (for those ‘good old days’) and motivation, spurred by the sense of new beginnings inherent to every fresh fall semester.

Healthcare and health IT aren’t so lucky as to have summers off, but there are still some major parallels between those industries and the U.S. school system. For starters, education in this country is subject to just as much scrutiny, just as much proposed reform and just as much criticism as healthcare is.

There’s no denying that they’re both flawed fields, but HIT could certainly learn a few valuable lessons from the education system in this ‘back to school’ moment.

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It’s official: healthcare is going mobile. The ubiquity of smartphone and tablet devices has spurned thousands of companies to create mobile apps that put healthcare in consumers’ pockets – and they can barely keep up with demand.

The market for mHealth apps is growing rapidly, estimated to reach $11.8 billion by 2018. For the industry to reach its full potential, however, developers can’t just keep retreading the same territory with every app they produce. There are only so many exercise monitors and illness-researching tools patients need on their phones, after all.

To keep mobile healthcare moving at full force, America’s elite universities are getting in on the game and taking mHealth to college.

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In its mission to make the healthcare industry more open, connected, transparent and user-friendly, CareCloud has found a kindred spirit in the Miami startup community: MD Clarity.

MD Clarity is a cloud-based software company whose solutions make it easy for patients, doctors and administrators to understand and analyze the pricing of healthcare services. Through easy-to-use web applications, MD Clarity uses data-driven analysis to help providers deliver clear patient payment estimates and guarantee accurate reimbursements from insurers. Additionally, MD Clarity places a strong focus on enhancing the simplicity of the healthcare user experience for consumers and stakeholders – a goal we at CareCloud wholeheartedly align with.

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If you’re counting on earning 2012 Meaningful Use incentives from Medicare, but have yet to implement an EHR system in your practice, your time is running out.

No, CMS hasn’t moved up the attestation deadline. You can file your attestation online on December 31 and still earn the maximum payout amount for 2012.

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The perils of the “bring your own device” trend – privacy breaches, distraction issues and confidentiality troubles, just to name a few – are proving extremely challenging for healthcare organizations to surmount.

But whether they like it or not, the ubiquity of smartphones is making it necessary for medical groups across the country to implement secure “BYOD” measures across all departments.

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That’s right – some of the government’s most sensitive information is moving out of the server and into the cloud.

News broke last month that the Pentagon is planning to implement a four-part “cloud computing strategy” across the Department of Defense. According to the DoD, this ambitious program will “create a more agile, secure, and cost-effective service environment that can rapidly respond to changing mission needs.”

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To help area healthcare execs and business owners gain perspective on the tumultuous state of healthcare in the U.S., the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce recently hosted a well-attended luncheon and panel discussion on healthcare.

The event was called “What’s Next After the Supreme Court Rules?” but that moniker’s a bit misleading. Judging from its name, the CareCloud reps that attended the event were expecting it to center on politically divisive arguments for and against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

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For the second year in a row, prominent Twitter influencer @theEHRguy – aka Michael Planchart, healthcare interoperability consultant and health IT blogger – has compiled the #HIT100 list, which recognizes individuals and companies that are supporting healthcare information technology via social media.

We’re happy to report that CareCloud made the 2012 ranks, clocking in at number 27!

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