At first you had no clue...Published: 2009-12-25 20:28:30Author: Chiropractic Economics | December 2009
At first you had no clue. Then, you had your suspicions. But you
couldn’t put a finger on anything specific. You were pretty sure that
there was more cash coming in than you were actually seeing. By the
time you were certain, thousands of dollars had been stolen by a
trusted employee.
Local law enforcement has to
build a case against the wayward employee. The problem? Evidence. Or
lack thereof. Though you’ve managed to convince cops and local
prosecutor that a pattern of theft exists, it’s not enough for a court.
In fact, she was so good at the deception – which went on for several
years – that even though you thought you were diligent, she simply
outsmarted you. She backdated entries, changed dates – whatever she
could to make everything appear “normal.”
This is
where the right computer system comes in to save the day. First, the
software must be truly HIPAA compliant. That means it actually tracks
who added, deleted, and accessed PHI (Patient History Information) data
– and when they did it. Of course, few systems take any more than a
“bare bones” approach because the performance hit is too great. That’s
where a system like ECLIPSE comes in. When you use your VISA card, make
a call, or make a hotel reservation – and that’s just the top of the
iceberg – you interact with the same commercial database technology
that’s in ECLIPSE. That technology doesn’t exist in any other
chiropractic software… which is funny when you think about it… because
Apple, IBM and Microsoft license it too.
The last
case I was involved with in PA involved a front desk employee who
methodically took advantage of her employer’s trust and eventually
stole many thousands of dollars before her thefts were discovered.
Prosecution wouldn’t have been possible without the invisible audit
features present in ECLIPSE. Despite the fact that this employee went to great lengths to
cover her tracks by deleting and back dating entries (she had
permission to do so), the prosecution was able to use hidden, embedded
information that revealed her attempts to mask the thefts.
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