The following resources are provided to help you with terms and concepts you may
encounter while considering our services.
PractiShield™
introduces a comprehensive network defense solution
for anti-virus / anti-malware. Now you can apply the advanced
technology similarly used by major hospitals and large corporations,
but at a cost that is within your reach.
| PractiShield FAQ: | |
| Q: | I have anti-virus software installed. Why do I need PractiShield? |
| A: | Web borne attacks are rampant and the ability to safeguard your practice's critical data is absolutely essential to maintaining your business and patient trust. However, your defenses cannot interfere with the performance of you and your staff. PC-based anti- virus software still disrupts the performance of your office computers and servers; who wants to see a frozen machine while you're trying to perform a patient consultation? PractiShield provides the performance to guard against multiple threat vectors while protecting all the devices and machines in your office. Moreover, PractiShield will reduce your total IT cost while increasing protection of your practice. |
| Q: | I don't understand all of the services that PractiShield protects against. How do I know I need to be protected from them? |
| A: | We will cover the nuances of various threat vectors during our consultation. Moreover, with PractiShield Premium we will provide you with detailed threat assessment reports highlighting the types of attacks being launched against your office. |
| Q: | What is required to set-up PractiShield? Sounds like a lot of software and details that I don't know about. |
| A: | Basically, the modules of PractiShield are pre-installed. We will provide an initial consultation with you to establish various policy and enforcement choices. For example, do you want staff members to see a warning? Do you want to receive a report on particular activities? Do you want staff members prevented from reaching particular websites or from all websites within a particular category? For the most part, the installation and set-up can be completed over a lunch hour. |
| Q: | Do I still need to buy and upgrade anti-virus software for my PCs after installing PractiShield? |
| A: | We are confident in advising that you will not. PractiShield is a proactive shield for your network that does not enable users to reach certain sites to start with. PC-based anti-virus software are generally reactive in that they try to detect bad stuff after a member has already reached the site. PractiShield will save you money since you no longer need to purchase anti-virus software per PC with annual updates. Plus you gain additional valuable capabilities with PractiShield such as VPN, Routing / QoS, Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, etc. that are not provided with anti-virus software. Finally, your PCs and servers do not suffer performance bottlenecks due to periodic anti-virus software scanning that happens at inopportune moments (such as when you're trying to review an image to complete a treatment card or trying to show a result to a patient). |
| Q: | What is the difference between PractiShield Standard and Premium? |
| A: | Basically, Premium provides the same protection features as does Standard but additionally provides event monitoring and security analysis by Total Practice IT. Unfortunately, many companies (even large corporations) make decisions to "set-and-forget" security appliances under the assumption that adequate protection is being provided without additional monitoring costs. No doubt you may have experienced the frequent alert from PC-based anti-virus solutions that provide you with some obscure warning while sometimes informing you that it has "fixed" the problem. Most users do not really understand the warning or the impact of supposed fixes, yet just trust in the application. Unfortunately, bad guys rely upon this typical behavior and are getting more intent in exploiting such flaws with prolonged and intentional attacks. For this reason, PractiShield Premium provides you with our experienced analysis in reviewing events or alarms that may be registered by the PractiShield at your office and enabling us to undertake a countermeasure or inform you of a situation that may be an individualized attack on your practice. |
PractiSafe™
introduces a fully managed, affordable data backup service
that combines onsite recovery speed and offsite disaster recovery protection.
You only pay for the amount of data backed up: no per-transaction cost, no
cumulative costs, no "overage" penalites.
| PractiSafe FAQ: | |
| Q: | Do you provide offsite backup? |
| A: | Yes, data is automatically and securely transferred from our onsite storage appliance to two remotely located data centers (located in Austin, TX and Dallas, TX). The PractiSafe service automatically includes both onsite and remote data backups. |
| Q: | Why do I need onsite backup? |
| A: |
Onsite backup enables fast and convenient data recovery.
In the event you lose or mistakenly delete a file, you may recovery it
with a simple click. Because the onsite appliance is directly connected to your local network,
files and directories are immediately transferred to your machine without delay.
In the event of a failure of your server, onsite backup enables recovery in minutes minimizing your downtime. |
| Q: | Why do I need offsite backup? |
| A: | Offsite (or remote) backup protects you in the event of a catastrophic failure event. Should your facilities or equipment ever become damaged, your data can be recovered from our remote data centers to enable you to get back in business within a day (even it's in a new facility). |
| Q: | What about Internet-only remote backup? |
| A: | You will find many Internet-only backup services offered. However, you should know that many (if not most) of those providers do not own their own storage server facilities. In fact, they rent or lease storage from other providers. This increases the cost of their service which is often passed on to you, the client. Also, your data may be transferred several times as other service providers share the same servers at that facility. Unfortunately, there are presently no standards for protected, authorizing, validating, or even tracking your data in those types of remote-only storage service provider networks. The risk? Your data may become corrupted, lost, or even fall into the wrong hands. Total Practice IT owns our own data center facilities and are always in control of your information. |
| Q: | Can I recover my files quickly and easily? |
| A: | Yes! With PractiSafe, your data is always available on the local repository as well as on remote storage servers. You don't need to "initiate a recovery transaction" or place any calls to recover your information. If your network or facilities is ever damaged, we'll know about probably before you and will begin recovery procedures for you. With other services that only provide remote data backup, you may be required to place a service call as they have to perform transactions to access and transfer your data back to you. Moreover, the transfer can be extremely slow, requiring a full business day or more to move the information back to your site. With PractiSafe, your recovery is always in your control. |
| Q: | Why should I choose PractiSafe backup? |
| A: | In addition to the economical cost advantage, improved recovery time, and more fault-tolerant architecture, you should also be aware that PractiSafe is non-invasive and "agentless" which means no new software is installed on your PCs or servers. You have no new user interfaces, schedules, or set-up to perform. No staff training is required. Further, Total Practice IT's experience in healthcare practices provides you with a helpful consultation to ensure that the right data is being backed up; frequently, due to the increasing complexity of practice management software packages, clients overlook important files required for recovery of systems, applications, patient records, and financial information. Finally, PractiSafe is compatible with Microsoft and Apple systems. |
| Q: | Please explain your service fees? |
| A: | With PractiSafe, we will help you determine the information that requires backup protection. That information is backed up on a daily basis. Your fee is based on the amount of information that is protected, not on the total amount of information backed up. This means that if you are protecting 25GB of information, then you are billed for 25GB of information on a monthly basis. However, you are actually being protected with daily backups of effectively 25GB each. PractiSafe provides the intelligence to backup only the changed files vs. the initial baseline. You control how long data is maintained. Some services impose limits such as retaining only the most recent 30-days of backup data. PractiSafe will retain your information for as long as you desire. The main limitation is in the size of the PractiSafe appliance itself (and of course, you budget). Total Practice IT can work with you to adjust your backups from daily to weekly, monthly, or annually for historical information and archival. |
| Q: | How is my data protected? |
| A: | PractiSafe affords multiple levels of security protection. Data is read-only on the local (onsite) appliance and cannot be modified by any staff member. Data is transferred from the appliance to the remote (offsite) data centers and is protected by SSH before it leaves your site. (SSH is the same protocol, encryption, and authentication that protects online credit-card transactions.) Data is always under the control of Total Practice IT while stored on the remote data centers; we do not lease storage or server equipment from other storage provider vendors. Data at the remote storage site cannot be overwritten by any rogue client (should one gain access to the PractiSafe appliance at your site). Each PractiSafe appliance is uniquely and securely identified to prevent spoofing by any other user or device. Your data undergoes numerous validation steps of metadata to ensure that the information transferred and stored remotely is exactly the same as the data stored locally. |
PractiSync™
enables multiple offices to operate independently with their own databases while
securely synchronizing all transactions, images, and documents among the offices in real-time
for quick collaboration.
| PractiSync FAQ: | |
| Q: | What is PractiSync? |
| A: | PractiSync enables two (or more) offices within the same practice to maintain a consistent state of database and files as each office generates its own data. For every transaction (a patient entry, an appointment entry, a doctor treatment note entry, billing, etc.), the transaction is replicated from one practice management software database in one office to the database in another remote or branch office. |
| Q: | What is the advantage of enabling both offices to operate independently? |
| A: |
First, staff performance improves as the remote office staff does not
experience per-transaction latency or delay. Without PractiSync, each transaction requires waiting
for the transaction to travel over a network to the centralized office, service processing delay, and
the response to be propagated back to the remote office. Even with broadband access, this type of latency
is noticeable and objectionable (especially if you're the office manager or staff person entering hundreds
of transactions per day). With PractiSync, the WAN latency is hidden from the staff - a transaction completes
immediately allowing the staff member to continue to the next operation while the transaction is replicated
behind the scenes to maintain a consistent view of information across both offices.
Second, business continuity improves as each office site can operate
independently with PractiSync. Without PractiSync, both offices typically share a single server so that if
a hardware, network, or application failure occurs, both offices are affectively down which is a financial
disadvantage as well as impact to your patients. PractiSync allows both offices to continue operation and
enables automatic recovery of transactions across offices after the resource is re-established.
Third, Multi-doctor consultation and collaboration improves. Because all of
your critical information (patient records, diagnostic images, treatment cards, etc.) are locally accessible,
you can diagnose or consult with physicians in the remote office without delay. This is because PractiSync
also synchronizes images and files across offices in addition to databases. Other solutions either impose
unreasonable delays in transferring images across the Internet or only sychronizing files on a daily basis.
|
| Q: | Which practice management software does PractiSync support? |
| A: | Currently, PractiSync supports Dolphin Imaging and Management. However, we are working on providing equivalent service offerings for other popular PMS suites. |
| Q: | How do I know that the databases in both offices match? |
| A: | PractiSync provides a formal verification module to compare SQL schema and data between both office sites which provides an equivalency check and result for each record of the practice management database. With PractiSync, you don't have to wonder if things are going OK, you can check with a couple of clicks. |
| Q: | Which practice management software does PractiSync support? |
| A: | Currently, PractiSync supports Dolphin Imaging and Management. However, we are working on providing equivalent service offerings for other popular PMS suites. |
| Q: | Why don't you publish PractiSync pricing? |
| A: | As a managed service, PractiSync does require preparation of your database and electronic information and related services for data backup, synchronization, and event monitoring. In general, the service may be established within one business day. However, we prefer to provide a detailed consultation with the client to explain the steps involved in the preparation and operation. Also, depending on whether the client is preparing to open a new office or wants to migrate two existing offices, the details of the set-up service and costs differ. |
