Telemedicine is the remote delivery of healthcare services, such as health assessments or consultations, over the telecommunications infrastructure. It allows healthcare providers to evaluate, diagnose and treat patients using common technology, such as video conferencing and smartphones, without the need for an in-person visit.

As various parties seek more efficient ways to provide care at less cost to the patient, telemedicine's role has grown. It is often a time-saving way for a consumer to see and speak to a clinician for minor and non-urgent medical needs instead of going to a primary care physician's office or emergency department. In recent years, many states have passed laws that make telemedicine easier to practice, and federal health regulators are also exploring ways to further grant Medicare reimbursements for telemedicine services.

Telemedicine can be classified into three main categories: remote patient monitoring, store-and-forward, and interactive telemedicine:

• Remote patient monitoring - also known as telemonitoring, allows patients with chronic diseases to be monitored in their homes with mobile medical devices that collect data about blood sugar levels, blood pressure or other vital signs. Remote caregivers can review the data instantly.
• Store-and-forward - also known as asynchronous telemedicine, lets providers share patient information, such as lab results, with a physician at another location.
• Interactive telemedicine - allows physicians and patients to communicate in real time. Such sessions can be conducted in the patient's home or in a nearby medical facility and include telephone conversations or the use of video conferencing software that complies with HIPAA regulations.

Some of the benefits of telemedicine for patients include:

• Convenience: Patients do not have to take time away from work for an appointment. There is also no travel time or associated expenses, such as paying for gas or child care.
• Increased access: Patients in rural areas can obtain specialty services, such a mental health treatment or post-surgery follow up, that they otherwise might not get without traveling a large distance for an in-person visit. Similarly, patients who live in federally designated, underserved areas have increased access to primary, dental and mental healthcare.

The advantages of telemedicine for providers include:

• Reduced cancellations or no-shows: Because of its convenience for patients, telemedicine can reduce the number of cancellations or no- shows. Providers can reach out prior to or at the appointment time if the patient forgot about the appointment.
• Encourage healthy lifestyle choices: Telemedicine allows providers to encourage their patients' healthy lifestyle choices, such as smoking cessation.

We are here to take unneeded stress out of your life. That is why we have our customer service staff available on your schedule not ours. For questions about your life, health or supplemental insurance coverage, visit our contact page, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our Service staff is here to insure all of your questions are answered in a timely manner, so you can focus on getting well or tending to the needs of a sick or injured family member

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires covered entities to implement safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of protected health information.

Protected health information is the term given to health data created, received, stored, or transmitted by HIPAA-covered entities and their business associates in relation to the provision of healthcare, healthcare operations and payment for healthcare services. Protected health information is often shortened to PHI, or in the case of electronic health information, ePHI.

Protected health information includes all individually identifiable health information, including demographic data, medical histories, test results, insurance information, and other information used to identify a patient or provide healthcare services or healthcare coverage.The information relates to an individual’s past, present, and future physical and mental health, the provision of healthcare to an individual, or past, present, and future payments for healthcare. ‘Protected’ means the information is protected under the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

When individually identifiable information is used by a HIPAA covered entity or business associate in relation to healthcare services or payment it is classed as protected health information.

There are 18 identifiers that can be used to identify, contact, or locate a person. If health information is used with any of these identifiers it is considered identifiable. If PHI has all of these identifiers removed, it is no longer considered to be protected health information:

• Names (Full or last name and initial)
• All geographical identifiers smaller than a state, except for the initial three digits of a zip code if, according to the current publicly available data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census: the geographic unit formed by combining all zip codes with the same three initial digits contains more than 20,000 people; and the initial three digits of a zip code for all such geographic units containing 20,000 or fewer people is changed to 000
• Dates (other than year) directly related to an individual
• Phone Numbers
• Fax numbers
• Email addresses
• Social Security numbers
• Medical record numbers
• Health insurance beneficiary numbers
• Account numbers
• Certificate/license numbers
• Vehicle identifiers (including serial numbers and license plate numbers)
• Device identifiers and serial numbers;
• Web Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
• Internet Protocol (IP) address numbers
• Biometric identifiers, including finger, retinal and voice prints
• Full face photographic images and any comparable images
• Any other unique identifying number, characteristic, or code except the unique code assigned by the investigator to code the data

It seems very complex and it is, this is why we have developed a secure and HIPAA compliant portal with which to transfer information should a need or issue arise. We take our clients privacy and security very seriously and go above and beyond any an all current laws or regulations to secure private or proprietary information.

Organizations that offer health and wellness benefits, once a year, have what is referred to as open enrollment for their employees to choose their workplace benefits. Health, vision, dental, life insurance, even pet insurance may be up for grabs.

Open enrollment season is a period of time when employees may elect or change the benefit options available through their employer, such as health, dental and life insurance, and ancillary or voluntary benefits ranging from legal services to pet insurance. Some benefits are fully paid by the employer, some are employee-paid through salary deferral or a section 125 cafeteria plan, and for some the cost is shared.

Most companies schedule open enrollment to end a few weeks before enrollment forms must be submitted to benefit providers. For example, a calendar-year benefit plan starting Jan. 1, open enrollment often takes place in November.

Open enrollment is not required to be a certain length of time. Most employers have an open enrollment period of at least two to four weeks. This can be done either remotely or by on site open enrollment where, in most cases, employees can speak directly to the individual providers to get their questions answered and make educated buying decisions.

Easy access to important documents, users can greatly benefit from resources like online document access. That is why we provide our clients with their very own, easy to use, website that contains all needed forms and plan information saving both time an effort when a need arises.

Easy access to contact information, insurance is something you have, you pay for, and continue to have until you need it. In most cases, it’s a very “set it and forget it” product. But, when the need does arise, it is usually due to a critical issue in your client’s life. When the worst happens, we make sure contact information is easily accessible and placed consistently throughout your website.

This, is in addition to a clearly defined Contact page in the main navigation, ensures your site visitors can quickly and easily figure out how to get in touch when they need you the most. In addition to ensuring your contact information is clearly visible on your site, we check regularly to confirm the information posted is accurate and up to date.

Lastly, don’t forget mobile users. Best practice number one (see above) is to have a responsive website, because - lets not forget - over half of internet users access the web via their smartphone. We make sure that contact information is clickable on mobile. With a touch of a finger, users should be able to autopull your email address and auto-dial your phone number.

A lunch and learn program is usually about a 30- to 45-minutes training or presentation session that an organization or team facilitates for employees, volunteers or others during a lunch hour. This session might be held in the cafeteria, in an auditorium, in a conference room, in an office lounge. Regardless of where it's held, the session will most definitely provide lunch and drinks for employees and those in attendance, that's the incentive that sets this lunch-and-learn concept apart from other training sessions and presentations.

The topics of your lunch and learn program should appeal to the designated audience attending. If you work for a specific department within a company, or it's a company-wide lunch and learn, you'll want to take into consideration the mission and skills necessary for that department or company. You'll also want to take into consideration the general interests of the people in your audience. For example, younger employees might not be interested in learning about retirement plans just yet. Likewise, employees who don't plan on having families might not be interested in learning about parental leave.

Here are five topics that could likely benefit all employees:

• Financial Literacy - Everyone, regardless of their age or status or background, can benefit from understanding their finances. Financial literacy might be a presentation on key financial terms and phrases. It'd be about decoding financial jargon that intimidates and even confuses a lot of us.
• Stay Fit While You Sit - Fitness is important to everyone, especially those of us sitting at a desk all day. A presentation on how to stay fit while you sit could be beneficial and even fun for all employees. This might include some meal prepping tips, some chair yoga exercises or some sitting stretches.
• Personal Development - Personal development spans the gamut. This presentation or training session might be on a number of skills. Think: communicating, negotiating, listening, setting/achieving goals, keeping a positive attitude and more. It can even mean taking the time to learn a fun new skill like wood carving, drawing, painting, weaving or something else entirely.
• Diversity Training - Tons of companies offer diversity training programs. As companies look to retain and attract diverse workforces, bringing everyone together to discuss diversity is important. It's also an important time for the organizers to learn what they could be doing better or more of, as well. Lunchtime is also a great time to invite guest speakers or showcase cross-cultural education
• Budgeting 101- Like financial literacy, everyone, regardless of age, status or background, can benefit from knowing how to budget. This might showcase different budgeting tools, teach budgeting skills, help attendees set budgeting goals and more. It may also be specifically tied to budgeting for a particular reason; retirement, vacation, tuition, rent, shopping, etc.

The important thing to remember is that a lunch and learn program is not the time to perform training that's required either by law or by the company, those should be taken more seriously and should be mandatory for all employees; lunch-and-learn sessions are usually voluntary.
There are tons of benefits from hosting a lunch and learn in today's stressful economy. Some of the most obvious benefits:

• Boost employee morale
• Improve team communication
• Build teamwork skills
• Advances training initiatives
• Creates excitement and positivity
• Provides networking opportunities
• Brings employees together
• Reinforces company culture
• Increases critical awareness for issues
• Introduces new organizational initiatives
• Uses time wisely
• Creates an open channel for information flow and training
• Teaches employees new work skills
• Teaches employees new personal skills

While anyone can host a lunch and learn program, there are some keys to a successful lunch and learn that make it both informative and enjoyable for participants. Here are 10 steps to launching a successful lunch and learn.

• Time Management - Your lunch and learn program should utilize attendees' time wisely. You want to make sure that you're not constantly taking up their lunch periods and, when you do, it's for good reason.
• Proper Advertisement - A successful lunch and learn is properly advertised well in advance so that attendees can make the scheduling plans they need to make sure that they can attend. That might mean rescheduling lunches with other coworkers or clients, moving some things are their schedules, not packing their lunch that day (or packing their lunch that day), and more. Advertising will also build up the hype surrounding the session and allow attendees time to prepare for whatever it is that they'll be learning or doing.
• Educated Presenters - A legitimate lunch and learn will be taught by someone who is an expert on the topic, or hosted by someone who has brought in expert speakers and other presenters. If it's a class on drawing, for example, the person presenting should be a good drawer. If it's a class on budgeting, you might want to bring in a financial planning expert to speak to guests.
• Interested Attendees - Attendees should willingly want to come to your lunch and learn it shouldn't be a mandatory event but, rather, one that brings in a lot of people from sheer interest alone.
• Applicable Topics - One way to get employees interested is by offering applicable topics like the aforementioned suggestions.
• Timeliness - Timeliness can be an asset to any lunch and learn. If it's around time for people to file their taxes, for example, the session might be about how to file taxes or how to navigate the new tax laws.
• Good Food - Of course, any lunch and learn program needs good food. If you're going to take an employee away from their own lunch period, when they could have hit their favorite local spot or brought their own meal, you might as well make sure the meal you serve them is comparable if not better.
• A health fair is an educational and interactive event designed for outreach to provide basic preventive medicine and medical screening for employees at work in conjunction with workplace wellness.

A health fair is an educational and interactive event designed for outreach to provide basic preventive medicine and medical screening for employees at work in conjunction with workplace wellness.

Health fairs are typically offered on site organizations, work sites. They consist of a variety of vendors and exhibitors that educate on all aspects of health, wellness, fitness and lifestyle improvements.

Topics can include such things as chiropractic, acupuncture, fitness clubs and hospitals.It is very common to see health screenings such as cholesterol testing or blood pressure screenings. Health Fairs are advertised and promoted ahead of time by email and flyers in the work place and are usually a half or full day event.