Today, according to the New York Times, as at least 1 in 4 Americans are being instructed to shelter in place, the CDC recommends that everyone use telemedicine whenever possible. The Houston Chronicle 5-25-20 article on Pre-Natal care, “the Pandemic’s ‘Silver Lining’is the move toward virtual visits with medical professionals and empowerment.
It’s a big game-changer”.
Even if no other good for health care emerges from the Coronavirus crisis, one development — the incorporation of telemedicine into routine medical care — promises to be transformative. The Washington Post projects over 1 billion telehealth visits by the end of 2020. The Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has eliminated geographic restrictions on telemedicine and authorizing reimbursement parity, so now that insurers are willing to fully reimburse claims from telehealth visits, the industry is expanding rapidly.
But how can the Medical community—who is rendering these services – legally protect themselves from tampering, hacking, and manipulation of these “files”? The process could easily open the door to malpractice claims, challenges as to accuracy, and disputes that are costly in resolution as to what actually occurred. How can hospitals and doctors assure themselves of reliability, accuracy, global accessibility 24/7/365, and legal validity against any future Court challenges? With or without telemedicine, the Medical community needs such protection and legal assurances for the documents and digital acts.
Approved in concept by the state of Texas Insurance Commissioner, the Chairman of the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee, and twice invited to present to the annual conferences of the National Notary Association, Digital Documents Advisers’ DocumentsForever is a platform that among other things provides the Medical community with legally defensible and always available protection.
It is like an “assurance policy” for hospitals, clinics, doctors, and all other medical practitioners for all their documented actions- in either paper or digital form, or in the form of digital acts, such as video or photographic media, for reliable storage of their (and their patients) medical activities, medical directives and files etc. with judicial reliability. Timestamped, double hashed, and placed into a Digital Controlled Chain of Custody Certificate (“DCCCC”) which is secured in a Blockchain. It is an inexpensive, tamper-proof, non-hackable secure controlled chain of custody certificate in Blockchain, and legally probative as originals in Court.
This is clearly an opportunity to provide an important new service for Hospitals, Clinics, Medical Practitioners and their staffs, and especially for their patients. Such a “document insurance policy” also avoids disaster concerns, memory dependency on “who has them”; “where are they”, or “can I get to them immediately at any time, day or night, weekend or weekday.”
Unlike other file storage solutions, the DocumentsForever platform allows you to designate selected authorized individuals to access a document, without the need for them to be pre-existing users in the system. Any authorized person has access to the documents at any time and from any location globally—24/7/365.
With the use of DocumentsForever’s ”codes of circumstance”, one can give relatives and beneficiaries their own special keys to access specific pre-authorized medical directives and documents when urgently needed by or for them. For all important documents, you and they will have the key.
The DocumentsForever concept and platform have been vetted amongst two separate groups: the positive acceptance of the presentation of its’ concept at the annual National Notary Association’s Annual Convention in June, 2018, and in November, 2018 at an International Conference on Legal Digital Documents for Latin America in conjunction with the University of Houston Law Center, with notaries, attorneys, governmental agents, and educators from eight different Latin nations. It was also deemed acceptable by the Chairman of the Texas State Insurance Commission and the Chairman of the of the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee.
This platform is not to be confused with the partial solutions and tools offered by other software platforms and programs (Docusign, Legalvault, Safedocs, certainsafe, etc.), since none of them have the total, comprehensive Court-acceptable solution offered by DocumentsForever and the protection of Blockchain.
Either through certified uploading via a DocumentsForever Agent (Medical assistant, notary, attorney, banking authority, etc) taking the easy and brief training online, the costs are minimal, and based upon quantity with a one-time document uploading charge per file up to 15 Meg (amount to be discussed with the Firm), and an annual storage and maintenance fee.
Robert T. Sakowitz