Introducing MedWay: An eye on cybersecurity and patient records

MedWay, a new management network launched by CMA Physician Services, helps physicians serve patients. But patient records are not part of MedWay’s online administrative program. MedWay CEO David Ford discusses the program and how it works to serve the office-function needs of independent practices.

Medical Economics: Does Medway end up touching a lot of patient records? And, if so, are there cybersecurity measures that will protect that confidentiality?

David Ford: Easy answer to that question: No, we do not touch the patient records. We don't touch the electronic medical record system. That is by design. Our platform has very good cyber security for, obviously, the employee records, which are important too, but for those concerns about HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and then in California what's called CMIA (the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act), no, we don't touch the patient records. We steer clear of all of that.

Medical Economics: To continue some discussion of some logistics, a moment ago, I had asked a little bit about patient records and confidentiality. Does Medway work with patient billing and reimbursement?

David Ford: No. At least not at the moment. It's something that we may look at down the line. But as we built out our initial offering, we really wanted to meet the need that we heard the most, and the one that came up over and over and over and over again, which was, these HR functions. Down the line, we may look at some other things that are possibly a little more physician specific. We do also have some partners who are in the billing-collections-rev cycle space that we could refer physicians too, if they really needed that. But for the moment, it's not part of the MedWay offering.