trying to create a scheduling doctor appointments in Access 2013

Patient information s.a. phone numbers are an important part of schedulers- they occasionally need to be called up to reschedule or to see if they are coming in at all! Anyhow, what makes a phone number less secure on a scheduler than on a form elsewhere in an EHR (electronic health record system)? I could see this being a problem if you post the scheduler on-line, though.

A lot of the large EHR ("electronic health record") companies make all sorts of excuses why a practice shouldn't make their own EHR in order to get providers to fork out tens of thousands of dollars for their proprietary EHR systems:

1. the program is too insecure
2. MS Access tables can't handle the volume of data
3. there are nebulous laws for patient security that only the "big boys" could handle
4. it's way too hard to make your own EMR/EHR
5. then Medicare got into the game, penalizing physicians for not having an "approved" EHR. Medicare especially touted "interoperability" which has yet to be realized (if they post a set of standards, I'll meet them using Access).

My responses to these issues were:

1 & 2) it all depends on the environment you're programming for- small to medium sized clinic (OK) or a hospital (probably not as they have other rules and regulations set by the Joint Commission)? The MS Access back end tables are powerful enough to handle any small to moderate sized office with as many as 10 computers. My accounts table alone has over 40000 entries (I try to keep it trimmed to cover the past 4 years). It comes free with an Access subscription. That's a great deal...

3. laws- think HIPAA, which is for medical transmission purposes. They don't want to have more red tape to EHRs than to paper records otherwise their use won't prosper. A lot of this are scare tactics. The Feds have much more on their hands than to destroy your practice.
4. bogus- anyone can make their own EHR. In fact, to prove that point I made an EHR using MS Word as a front end and MS Access as a back end to hold the patient tables. Here's a clip of the Word VB environment... not much different than Access.
5. The loss of Medicare income pales to the cost of actually owning and up-keeping and "meaningfully using" a proprietary EHR system on a yearly basis.

My last presentation on the MS Office / EHR was in a grand rounds at a local large hospital (Inova Fairfax Hospital) where I presented a Powerpoint summary of all my efforts- "Meaningful Use Regulations and Your Practice- Surviving the Perfect Storm" (URL: https://app.box.com/s/urr0eux55neet8bmgsgr https://app.box.com/s/f3jicp7l86q2sgbth762).

While many of the medical offices around me continue to close, I've survived, a lot having to do with my MS Access EMR. The only 2 large hurdles were:

1. When I had to switch to electronic billing- it's mandatory now if you wish to get paid. Many offices pay as much as 8% (or more) of their total gross billings yearly to an outside company to handle electronic billing. I contacted Office Ally (which is free) and was able to program an algorithm to transfer my daily MS Access billings at the end of the day to MS Excel using their spreadsheet, then up to the cloud- all with one click (I had to make it easy, as my secretary isn't all that bright). Cost: nothing. Took me 2 weeks to do.
2. When I switched up to MS Access 2016 and lost the calendar control as well as other issues, all of which are pretty much fixed now.  The switch was important to me as I want to finish the book that I started years ago on programming a MS Word EHR, but with the most current version of MS Office.

So as the controversial shoe company Nike advertises- "Just Do It" and get your EHR up and going...

Hmm, name address, phone number are not considered private in my location.  Even eMail and the like are not because they are *accessible* by looking a person up.  So the appointment itself has no bearing.

And please note, I am not saying you were wrong for posting the *warning*, just saying appointment information is just name, address and phone number.  IF someone post anything that suggest medical information (or any other information deemed private like SS numbers) is going to be stored in an Access database then the answer will be nope, nope, nope.

EDIT: Forgot to add, when making an appointment I have never told the person answering the phone WHY I want the appointment because it's none of their business either.  I would image that holds true for most.

The name, phone number (address?) and other associated personal information for the appointment is definitely private information. 

Depending on the privacy laws in your location, I can imagine that even the appointment info could be deemed private.

In general, appointments could include information about scheduled procedures or specific tests

• Mr x has an appointment for a prostate exam ...
• Mr Sheldon Cooper has been referred for a sanity test ...
• freshman high school student Miss z has an appointment for a pregnancy test ...

Bottom line, you are working for a large health company, as part of your design and planning you should talk to the IT department and/or legal department to find out what privacy laws apply, to what specific pieces of info.

@Rohn007,

While I'll agree that is a concern for health information but appointments?

I believe a coworker will be handling the medical information part. Thank you though for looking out for me. The links and information you provided are so invaluable and I will be reading up this weekend.