Natural Health Insurance: 3 Proven Immune Boosters

As important as it is to make sure you have 'normal' health coverage, it's even more important to increase the amount of 'natural' health insurance you have. After all, if you protect your body now you won't need to worry about paying a big doctor's bill later! One of the best ways to do this is by boosting your immune system and helping your body to fight off disease.

The following tips are some of the most effective methods for boosting your immune system naturally. Each one is absolutely proven to help protect you from a wide array of diseases, including heart disease and cancer. Incorporating them into your lifestyle is one of the easiest ways to 'buy' natural health insurance!

Eat Colorful Vegetables & Fruits

These extremely healthy foods should be the basis of your diet. Eating colorful veggies and fruits is a must if you want to stay healthy for life. They are packed with essential vitamins, minerals, fiber, and phytochemicals that keep your body -- and your immune system -- strong and ready to fight off disease. Choose things like leafy greens, bright red tomatoes, orange grapefruits, yellow peppers, and plump blueberries. Remember, the more colorful your plate is the healthier you're going to be.

Get 8 Hours of Sleep

There is no longer any doubt that lack of sleep affects the immune system and leads to health problems. Several recent studies have shown that getting a good night's sleep can dramatically boost your immune response, while even one night of poor sleep can significantly suppress immune function. The immune system is constantly working, so when we sleep the body is able to 'reinforce' and strengthen it, most likely by producing powerful hormones. Most people need about 8 hours of sleep per night for optimal health so that's a good number to shoot for.

Exercise 6 Days a Week

Exercise is a powerful immune booster, not to mention a very important component of good overall health. Regular, moderate exercise has been shown to lower an individual's likelihood of getting sick. It also boosts natural energy levels while relieving stress at the same time. To top it all off, regular exercise makes it much easier to sleep at night! Just don't overdo it. Too much exercise can actually suppress the immune system. Try to get about 30 to 40 minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week, leaving one day for rest and recovery.

Well, there you go -- 3 powerful and proven ways to boost your immune system and stay healthy. Each of the above are healthy habits which, over time, will provide you with an abundance of natural health insurance. If combined, you'll enjoy great health and wellbeing for a very long time!

Ryan Wilson is a writer for Natural-Health-Insurance.com, a guide to useful news & information about staying healthy. You can learn more at: http://www.natural-health-insurance.com/.

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HIPAA in a "Nutshell" - Guidelines for EMR and Paper Medical Records Compliance

 

HIPAA in a “nutshell”

There are two HIPAA rules requirements; privacy (2003) and security (2005). Both rules require:

-Identifying possible threats,
-Assessing specific vulnerabilities,
-Determining appropriate and reasonable safeguards and
-Implementing the necessary defense mechanisms and policies.

Using an EMR (electronic medical record) has no absolute right and wrongs in either computer equipment or software for HIPAA compliance. Usually there are four areas to examine:

-Physical Security – can your computers with patient data be stolen?
-User Security - can anybody log on to the patient database?
-System Security – what happens on a hard drive crash?
-Network Security – can unauthorized persons outside your facility access patient data?

Using paper medical records begs similar questions:

-Physical Security – how secure are the files from fire and theft?
-User Security - what access controls and logging is there?
-System Security – what happens in a fire or flood?
-Storage Access – are the files in a locked, secure area?

There are HIPAA penalties

The civil monetary penalty is up to $100 per person record per violation and up to $25,000 per year total for the same type of violation. There is 30 days to correct the problem if it is not through willful neglect.

The criminal penalties are for “misuse” and for obtaining or using health information by “false pretenses” or with the intent to sell, transfer or use it for commercial advantage, personal gain or malicious harm. These penalties are up to $250,000 and five years in jail.

Currently there is no real effective enforcement body.

HIPAA compliance "thumb rules"

With an EMR most of the requirements are common sense and providers do not need to be overly concerned but do require some basic steps like:

-Put your computer server in a secure room, locked,
-Use an EMR with user management and permissions,
-Make regular back-ups and store them in a secure place and
-Employ a computer specialist.

Most medical practices and clinics using paper records need to make physical changes to be HIPPA compliant. If you continue to use paper then there are a myriad of physical complexities to consider:

-How to monitor staff access,
-Fire and flood protection (insurance is not enough)
-A disaster plan (that has been documented and practiced.)

Finally, if there is a legal case brought forward a provider to protect themselves should have a trail of how the patient's individual information was accessed. For paper records this means at a minimum a monitored sign out sheet and for an EMR user logging of patient file access.

Michael Milne is the CEO of BrunMed, Inc. (http://www.brunmed.com), the developer of Medscribbler, the first handwriting embedded EMR for the Tablet PC. Visit http://www.medscribbler.com for more information on a handwriting enabled EMR.