About the Patient Data Vault

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.

What is the Patient Data Vault?

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.

The Challenge -- Patient Privacy

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.

Secure Communications of Patient Data

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.

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.

Communicating with Volunteers

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.

Features of the Patient Data Vault

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.

Benefits of the Patient Data Vault

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.