The BridgeBlog

The FTC announces it has extended the compliance deadline for the ‘Red Flags’ Rule or Identity Theft Policy from August 1, 2009 to November 1, 2009. The FTC granted this extension to give “creditors” and “financial institutions” additional time to review the Rule and determine what they must do to comply.
 
In addition to the new deadline, the Commission staff introduces additional small and low-risk entity resources that provide further guidance on the Rule.

According to the FTC and its web site, “the Red Flags Rule is an anti-fraud regulation, requiring creditors and financial institutions with covered accounts to implement programs to identify, detect and respond to warnings or ‘red flags,’ that could indicate identity theft.”

BridgeFront offers Red Flags Rule online training and a step-by-step manual to assist healthcare providers, deemed a creditor under the Rule, create an Identity Theft Policy and train its staff on the Rule and its organization-specific policy. Click here for more information about BridgeFront’s Red Flags Rule manual and online training.

Our development team has done it again … another version of our Learning Management System comes out August 15th, making it the third of just this year.

What’s in store for you in this release?

Course Editor – Have you ever wanted to use a standard course as a baseline, then add or remove pages from it? Now you can with our new Course Editing feature. Everything can be done by a normal computer user (no geek required). Just create a page, or two, or three … and add them into a standard course. Next time your staff logs in, the pages will be there.

Bulk Course Assignments – Want to assign 10 courses to 100 employees? Click 1-2-3 and you are done. The new proctor bulk assignment does all the work.

Customized Reports – Add columns, change the sort, add search criteria … oh, and by the way you can save those options for future use! Now it is easy to get to your training data without the normal hassle of running reports.

eCommerce Interface – Order a course online and it will instantly go into your training queue … no humans to wait on. Start your training in minutes after ordering.

Got an idea? Lets us know … this is what one client had to say about BridgeFront … “They are a great company to work with and are always willing to listen to their clients to continue to improve their products. I can’t even begin to quantify the savings we have gotten from not having to recreate the wheel when it comes to developing and maintaining training material and how my trainers can be working on other things while staff does on line classes. We do a combination of lecture, online, hands on and shadowing to really give them a good training base and it is always ongoing.”

Email us at info@bridgefront.com with your ideas … or just add them to this blog.

Simply “watching” your bottom line does nothing to improve it. You need to take action… meaningful policies, procedures, training and tracking measurements. Allowing your staff to  ‘train themselves’ is a big gamble, remember button-button when you were a kid?

Best practices indicate staff education is of the most important tool in improving revenue cycle performance. But who has time? Who has the expertise? And, each staff member has different learning styles. How do you achieve it all?

More and more organizations are utilizing online education. Vendors provide the experts, your staff takes the courses on ‘their’ time and you monitor KPIs realizing its positive effect.

Want to learn more? Download this report on online education.

The Red Flag and Address Discrepancy Rules should be in compliance or risk being fined. The deadline is August 1, 2009 (recently adjusted from May 1, 2009).

A creditor, as defined under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, includes any person who regularly extends, renews, or continues credit; any person who regularly arranges for the extension, renewal, or continuation of credit; or any assignee of an original creditor who participates in the decision to extend, renew, or continue credit.

According to the law firm Gates & Moore, “the Red Flag and Address Discrepancy Rules require physicians and healthcare providers, among other individuals and businesses deemed as ‘creditors’ (including banks, mortgage lenders, credit unions, utility companies, car dealers, and telecommunications companies) to develop and implement a formal written program to detect, prevent and mitigate identity theft, including medical identity theft.” And not only is a program required but also annual staff education about your organization’s program and healthcare fraud and abuse.

Sound like a daunting task? No need to worry – BridgeFront can help you or your organization create an ID Theft Prevention Program through a step-by-step manual and educate your large or small staff through our customizable online course. For more information, watch a quick video, visit www.bridgefront.com or call (866) 447-2211.