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Announcing an Innovative New Service for HVA Members!! |
HVA was created several years ago with the goal of Encouraging Excellence in Hospice
Volunteering Through Education and Communication. Since its inception, HVA
has introduced new services to hospice volunteers and their managers that are
very innovative and unique. We are pleased to introduce another new service to the hospice
community: the Patient Data Vault (PDV), which provides
hospices with improved volunteer communication capabilities.
This new service, expected to be introduced as a beta test program in the third quarter of 2008,
will be limited to a small group of HVA member hospices during the beta test period.
There will be a minimal charge for the PDV service to cover our costs during the beta test period, which
is expected to last 3-6 months. If you are a volunteer coordinator or volunteer
manager and are interested in being a participant, please contact us by
e-mail or toll-free by telephone at (866) 489-4325.
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 The Patient Data Vault (PDV) was
developed by HVA to assist hospices in moving from a paper-based volunteer reporting
system to an electronic one. There are many benefits relating to hospice operating
efficiencies when volunteer data can be entered once by the volunteer and then transmitted
to the hospice, where it can be stored and manipulated for reporting and future
retrieval purposes. The PDV also provides hospices a means of communicating patient
information to their volunteers.
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 The challenge to hospices wanting to use electronic
communications is ensuring that the patient information that is communicated between
the volunteer coordinator and the volunteer meets Federal government guidelines
for privacy. The Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information
(“Privacy Rule”) establishes national standards for the protection of certain
health information. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued
the Privacy Rule to implement the requirement of the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The Privacy Rule standards address the use and disclosure of individuals’ health
information — called “protected health information” by organizations subject to
the Privacy Rule — called “covered entities,” as well as standards for individuals'
privacy rights to understand and control how their health information is used.
A major goal of the Privacy Rule is to assure that individuals’ health information
is properly protected while at the same time allowing the flow of health information needed to provide
and promote high quality health care and to protect the public's health and well
being. The Rule strikes a balance that permits important uses of information, while
protecting the privacy of people who seek care and healing. Given that the health
care marketplace is diverse, the Rule is designed to be flexible and comprehensive
to cover the variety of uses and disclosures that need to be addressed.
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 HIPAA standardized the electronic exchange of sensitive
patient data to protect patients from unauthorized disclosure of their medical
records.
HVA's PDV complies with all security requirements specified in the
HIPAA Security Guidance for Remote Use of and Access to Electronic Protected Health
Information. The key to achieving the required level of patient
data security is to implement a data vault that uses the most robust encryption
technologies available and in use by institutions that require high levels of security.
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It is equally important that hospice volunteers and staff receive adequate training
on the basic requirements of HIPAA so that inadvertant disclosures do not occur during
patient data collection, entry, transportation, storage and retrieval operations.
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The principal trait of an effective hospice volunteer coordinator or manager, referred
to as a "VC" hereinafter, is being a good communicator. Good communication tools
are a necessity in this day and age where the VC's are being required to perform
more and more management functions in addition to coordinating volunteer
activities thus requiring them to become more efficient.
Communicating by telephone is inefficient because the likelihood of reaching a volunteer
during normal business hours is a hit-and-miss proposition. E-mail works better
but when it comes to communicating about a potential or currently assigned patient,
it becomes cumbersome because patient specifics must be sanitized and anonymized
before the communication can be e-mailed.
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HVA designed the PDV specifically for the hospice VC. This tool offers VC's new methods
for enhancing volunteer communications. The PDV not only provides a very secure
storage vault for patient data, it also provides the utmost in communication flexibility
that satisfies the stringent data privacy protection requirements of HIPAA. Here are some
of the benefits of the PDV:
- No New Software Required - improved
communication and volunteer-related patient data protection that meets HIPAA requirements
without the need to purchase or install any new software.
- Easy access - volunteers and VC's
can access full PDV functionality from anywhere through a standard Internet connection
without compromising patient data security
- Customizeable to your needs - the
user interface and data forms are simple and friendly with a flexibility that allows
the VC to customize report forms and communications to meet your hospice's specific needs.
- Patient Visit Reports - volunteers
can fill out and submit reports for patient visits from an Internet browser on their
home computer directly into the hospice's PDV. The volunteer does not require any
special software and all data entered will be encrypted before it is sent to the vault.
- Secure Volunteer Communication -
volunteers and VC's can send messages containing sensitive patient data to each
other by sending them through the PDV. The volunteer and VC can access these communications
from anywhere through a standard Internet connection without compromising patient
data security.
- Security that meets HIPAA requirements - robust security measures
protect all patient data and volunteer communications:
- Password protection
- All patient data stored and retrieved from the PDV is encrypted
and deciphered at two levels. Only your hospice holds the combination to unlock your patient data
vault, therefore no one else can read your patient data, not even HVA.
- Secure encrypted backups are made of your data and kept for a
specified time period for future access in case data is inadvertantly misplaced
by staff or the computer you use to retrieve and store data from the vault fails.
- Flexible storage options - patient
data can be archived in the vault for a specified period of time and then automatically
destroyed or automatically destroyed upon retrieval.
- Help when you need it - HVA's technical
support staff will assist you in getting your hospice's vault set up
and ensure that your specific needs are being met.
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The PDV offers several benefits:
- Photocopying eliminated - no need
to spend time photocopying patient visit forms, putting them in envelopes, and addressing
them for distribution to volunteers.
- Mailing costs eliminated - the average
hospice (100 volunteers) spends over $3,000 a year on postage and labor associated
with providing self-addressed stamped envelopes for their volunteers so they may return their
patient visit notes to the hospice.
- Improved access to information -
volunteer patient data records can be organized and accessed rapidly by downloading
the data from the vault and immediately displaying it or storing it in a local database
or spreadsheet to make reports.
- Improved operating efficiency -
having volunteers enter their own patient visit information into online forms that
are then stored in the PDV eliminates the need for other administrative staff to
transcribe the same information from hard copy forms that are mailed back to the hospice.
- All patient volunteer hours easily compiled
- the ability to produce patient volunteer reports by downloading them and accumulating
all volunteer records in a spreadsheet will save time in monitoring volunteer hours
and computing totals for weekly, monthly or annual hospice reports.
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