GUEST SPEAKER, JOEL KANICK

Program: Mr. Joel Kanick, President & CEO of Kanick And Company. Mr. Joe Raymond, VP of Sales, Kanick and Company.

Joel Kanick was one of the first HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) certified professionals in the eastern U.S.   He is the primary architect and developer of interfaceMD Custom EMR Solutions (electronic medical records), which was built to match the present and future framework of the Federal and State health care legislation.

Mr. Kanick is a graduate of Canisius College with a B.A. in Information Systems. He has a 20-year professional career in the computing services industry, having held positions in project management, network administration, application development, and business consulting.   Mr. Kanick has also been active as volunteer coach for the Southline Little League (baseball).

 Medical records belong to patients. They must be given to patients at a nominal charge in a timely fashion.  Healthy-Link, funded by NY State and Federal grants along with insurance companies, is building a network that will allow doctors, facilities, etc. to share patient information electronically. This will help doctors using different electronic medical record (“EMR”) systems to communicate.

 Dentists, long-term care facilities, and private practitioners use different EMR systems. Same for the various federal agencies. For example, the VA has a system that cover veterans only, and that system is over 20 years old.

 Many doctors rushed out to purchase EMR’s when the requirement to move to electronic records was first established because there was a financial incentive, in the form of reimbursement grants, to do so. Many are unhappy with those systems and are replacing them. 20% of doctors have no EMR system.