Friday, September 14, 2007

Using Email and File Attachments

For many medical practices it is simpler and smarter to establish receives files that are attached to an E-mail.

Advantages

  • Email travels across the globe at all hours of the day or night. If a transcription agency sends your work out at midnight, it can be waiting for your office manager when that person arrives at work the following morning.

  • It is much easier to compress all the files of transcribed reports into a "zip file" and attach single file to an email message than to monitor an electronic file transmission containing multiple files.

  • Use your common sense. Do you stand in front of your house waiting for the mailman to show up each day? Or do you retrieve the mail from your mailbox at your convenience? Having files sent to your email address allows you to free up your computer for other tasks involving research, electronic claims billing, faxing, and correspondence.

  • By learning to manage incoming email efficiently, your office staff can streamline its work routine.
Disadvantages

  • If your staff starts downloading other file attachments as part of their personal correspondence on the Internet, it is quite possible that an enclosed file containing a computer virus could land on your hard drive and cause substantial damage.

  • You may need to learn a new set of computer skills in order to work with compressed (*.ZIP) files.

  • In order to be HIPAA-compliant, files containing patient-identifiable information that are attached to any email must meet certain standards of encryption.


Next: Compressing and Decompressing Files

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