MedLook has a built-in backup system.  By default it is enabled for every user.  Obviously the more backups you have the greater the likelihood you can restore to a reasonably good, recent backup.  In MedLook, the backup works daily and weekly and performs the backup upon startup.  It can also be initiated from the Start menu. Lastly, it can be activated by using the scheduler. 

The MedLook backup must first make a copy of the database before it makes the actual backup file.  Creating the copy often takes one or two times as long as actually making the backup. In addition, the Daily and Weekly backups prohibit any further activity from the user until the backup completes.  On small databases this backup procedure works fine and takes very little time. On a networked database with more data it can take over 10 minutes, maybe even 20 if the network is busy.

Even if you make your backups, a real concern is where to keep them?  By all means you need to keep a current backup on an external device.  If you have a power surge everything connected to the computer could be fried and you would possibly lose of your all backups.  That would be catastrophic.  At the very least you should be making a backup copy to an external hard drive (iPod, USB thumb drive, etc.) and disconnecting it from your network after completing the backup.

There is a better option though - on-line backups. There are a number of companies that offer this service.  Beware, they are not all equal. Some may or may not be HIPAA compliant.  They may make your backup easily enough but the restore process may be very painful (taking days, not minutes).  The fees also vary widely.

In our research we think we have found a very good solution in Offsite Computer Backup. The interface is excellent and can be managed from any internet connection or from the local computer itself. File restoration is also very easy.  The backup runs in the background and you won’t notice any performance degradation.  You can backup local drives, networked drives, and more.  You can schedule daily backups, multiple backups per day, and even do a continuous backup minimizing the amount of data (i.e. TIME) you can afford to lose.

There are two options with fees starting at $12/month (single computer, 6GB) or $20/month (multiple computers, 10GB).  We think both of these are a great value for the medical office. If you’ve ever lost your data you know that these modest fees are nothing in comparison to starting over.  Rest at ease - use an offsite backup service and know that if your office or home burns to the ground that your computer data (i.e. billing data and more) is safe and secure ready for you to access from another portal.

If $12/month is out of your price range (that’s one nice lunch a month), we are considering a $5 option which we administer and will only allow for your MedLook databases to be backed up and restoration may be at a cost.  Even so, your data is safe and IF you need to recover you don’t pay for that option until you actually need it. Hopefully you will never need to recover from a catastrophic event - but be prepared! This is only a consideration - we think any business should be able to afford the $12/month option.

Backups, backups, backups - make them often.  Save them offsite.  Be prepared for the worst and rest at ease knowing your data is safe and secure if you ever need to restore it.

In Batch Insurance Billing a batch of claims can be quickly generated for Unsubmitted claims (the mode you would normally use), for claims by date of entry (DOE), or for claims by date of service (DOS).  However, you can also easily rebill a batch of claims that have been marked as being submitted on a specific date. 

There are a number of reasons this might be useful.  I first encountered the need for this after a batch was generated using the Unsubmitted option and the claim file was NOT saved.  If the Save Reprint option had been used the Reprint could have been used. However, we don’t even need this option.  Using the SQL filter we can retrieve all claims marked as submitted for a given date.  Simply enter “;PostFile.Sub_date1={3/22/2010}” (excluding the double quotes, but using the semi-colon) in the SQL field for March 22, 2010.

You might wonder how you would possibly know to do this.  The answer is you simply wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask us for a little help.  We’re hoping to replace the SQL Filter with a complete dialog in MedLook 4.0.

There are a lot of little commands possible but not readily apparent within MedLook.  If you are not sure if MedLook supports a certain command, please ask. Be sure to look under the Tools menu and browse through all of the dialogs.  There are a number of very handy utilities in the menu system.

Have you ever wondered what your internet speed really is? You probably know what you are paying for but are you getting what you are paying for? I’ve used a number of different websites to test our connection speed.  Here’s a really simple and pretty reliable site.

http://speedtest.net/

Give it a try.