Frequently Asked Questions
Why is doing your practice’s IT the old on-site way so expensive and how is IVF Cloud better?
What is my Total Cost of Ownership by doing it the old way versus IVFCloud?
What are the Business Benefits of IVFCloud versus continuing to do it the old way?
So how much do I have to pay to get on your platform?
We do not charge any upfront costs such as hardware, software or project fees to stand up our private cloud platform, saving you from having to make any capital investments. Once we have reached an agreement, you will be invoiced the monthly fee based on the number of users on the platform, and as you add users, your fee will increase concurrent with the per user fee in your agreement. On the inverse side, if your user count decreases, your invoice will decrease concurrent with the number of users that have gone away. Your minimum fee will be the floor price established in your agreement. We believe this makes it so much easier for you to budget your IT costs as part of your overall employee expense, making it easier for you to account for and allocate those expenses.
Have you ever had a major service failure or significant downtime on your hosted platform?
We are proud to say we have never had a significant or major service failure on our platform. While we have SLA’s built into the agreement for platform uptime and performance, we have never had to pay any penalties under our SLA’s.
How do you mitigate any major downtime on your platform?
We build redundancies into the platform to ensure its availability, since we understand as prudent business people that downtime means a significant expense and potential loss to our clients.
What if I lose my internet connection, or my office is inaccessible due to storms or other catastrophes?
With our platform you are able to work from any location that has available internet access, including connecting through a cellular hotspot. Even during evens such as Superstorm Sandy, Irene and others, our clients have been able to reach the platform and continue working from locations that can provide them internet connectivity, including connecting in through cellular hotspots or tethered phones.
What happens if I change to a different EMR?
From our perspective that isn't an issue. We have many clients for whom we are hosting multiple iterations of EMR, since we understand that typically practices change EMR’s on average every 7 years, and further understand there is usually no migration path from one EMR to another. This allows our clients to access their legacy EMR data as needed without the need for an expensive data migration project. And since our fees are based on user count, we don’t charge extra for hosting multiple EMR’s on the platform.
Who has access to my data?
This is not a trivial question, and neither is our approach to protecting the sanctity of patient information/PHI on our platform. In our environment, you as the practice owner/manager decide who has access to patient and business data. We work with you to ensure you are granting access to legitimate users either under your direct control (e.g. employees, practitioners, etc.) and through your business relationships (as established under HIPAA covered by appropriately executed Business Associate Agreements). Our staff is fully trained on HIPAA/HITECH compliance, and we do not access any patient information or files. Our responsibility is the platform and its proper function. Should any troubleshooting be required on your EMR, biller or other component that contains PHI or proprietary information, we will work with you to provide access to the appropriate resources to get to the components in question, for the period of time required for them to complete their work, then ensure that access is turned off so as not to create the opportunity for a data breach. We strongly agree with the HIPAA rules that the patient owns their data, and the practice is the fiduciary custodian of that data. We also strongly believe that your business data is your intellectual property, and do our utmost to ensure it is protected, providing our guidance and counsel on best practices for you, your employees and business associates.
Can you track who has logged in and made changes to anything on the platform?
We do have technologies in place that can track changes made to Active Directory and other platform components, and can provide reports. However, that is not a replacement for the proper training, management and monitoring of your users, as required by HIPAA.
Is my email secure on your platform?
If we are providing hosted email as part of our platform, it would be on a dedicated Exchange server solely for your practice.
We can add specific components to your Exchange service for encrypting email if you are sending PHI to patients or outside recipients, to ensure you are in compliance with HIPAA.
Can I do secure texting on your platform?
If you wish to do secure texting, we will provide guidance on secure texting services that can be added as part of the hosted service. However, the best practice is to use a secure portal for communicating with your patients, and reserve texting for messaging your patients to access their portal for instructions, updates, etc.
What happens if someone accidently deletes a file or document?
We can retrieve deleted files, documents, shares from our backups. However, as always the best practice is to make sure you are saving your work throughout the day.
What kind of reports do you provide on your platform performance?
We provide a robust set of reports on platform performance, security, bandwidth utilization, etc. Sample reports are available upon request.