Stupiid computer issue, Electronic Medical Records freezes at home

[Tobra]

Fairly confident that everyone here is sharper than the tech support people I have been dealing with. Connect wirelessly, here and at the office. Connection at the house is faster than the one at the office. At home, it routinely gives me, connection was interrupted, try again, rarely if ever happens at the office. Never an issue losing the internet connection, judging by how fast I can look at the pictures Enzo and Tom post. This issue has been consistent, through three different computers, tried reinstalling the operating system, and the software for the records system. No dice.

It does not make any sense to me at all, and is more than somewhat frustrating. There must be more to it than just how good the connection is. The encryption for the wireless at the house is just as it is at the office.

Any suggestions?

[madmmac]

You are probably being blocked from home. You know the PII data you are trying to access is probably in a secure access zone.

Talk to your IT people. You may need an exception or a port open. Just a guess, but I guess pretty good.

[Brando]

You may also need to VPN into your office network. A lot of secure systems require you to do this to access data or run applications that access resources on your office network.

[KFC911]

I would eliminate wireless from the equation first. Try an Ethernet connection at home (i.e. plug into your router/WAP (wireless access point) and see if that changes the scenario. Doesn't sound as if you have an issue being "blocked" imo. Hope this helps...

edited: For clarification....you can access your medical records from home, it just gets "interrupted" on occasion?

[Tobra]

I can access them, it is routinely interrupted. It is not blocking me from accessing anything

I use the same laptop, always wireless, at both locations and it is extremely rare for it to happen at the office.

Have had the tech support people "working on it" for about a year.

[KFC911]

Do what I suggested and see what happens (eliminating a wireless "issue" while at home). If it still occurs, then I'll have another suggestion, but first things first

[Scott R]

Do you lose all access when the freeze happens? Or just the medical records?

[KFC911]

Don't put the cart before the horse Scott...we're gonna get there if Toby will let us know the results .

ps: I'm betting there truly is a "networking issue" that's causing lost packets from home....just a process of elimination to find the culprit.

[John Rogers]

What format are the records in, Oracle Forms, PDF, PHP, HTML, XML, DOC or ?????. I would think it is a timing issue on the server that handles the forms you are looking at and from my days hosing database and apps servers for customers in France, Singapore, Egypt and other places there was generally a place somewhere in the connection that was slow in relation to other hops.

I would try a visual trace route from your home computer to the server to see what the times are then on the apps server see what the timeout or whatever they might be called settings are. I would bet you are right close to the setting limit somewhere when all the times for the hops are added up.

I am surprised the "tech support" folks have not figured this out yet???? When we brought Singapore on line back in 2008 before I retired they had disconnect issues and we traced it to a switch they had between the 1st and 2nd floors of their office building in about 2 hours. We had a pretty great sysadmin guy from South Africa as I recall.

[KFC911]

I hear ya John...we're gonna get there soon enough. Believe it are not...approximately 49% of folks in "tech support" (just like all profesions) are below average in their field . Communications Systems Programmer/networking guru in a former life....BTDT so many times I can't remember...

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by Scott R

Do you lose all access when the freeze happens? Or just the medical records?

Just the medical records

Tried plugging it directly into the router, still got booted after doing a few chart notes.

The thing is, during the daytime, while the first string tech people are working, I am at my office. Maybe if I go in late or something. work from home until 0830.

JR, I have no idea what format it is. I think it is like a cloud thing. All the info is on a server, you log in and look at chart notes, lab results, whatever. The x ray thing has never worked worth a damn. Have a Macgyver type set up for that. It works, but is apparently not supposed to be able to, according to the error message it gives me when I log in to that part to look at imaging stuff.

My sister is some sort of uber engineer for HP, they poached her from Conner Peripherals, or Cisco, some such thing. When she lived down in San Jose, every few years someone would offer her a big sack of cash to switch teams. HP sent her to Singapore like 15 years ago to set up some factory, and while there she stepped in the gutter and broke her ankle. Fortunately, did not break the skin, as the gutter was an open sewer. They took her to the hospital, she looked around, did not think that livestock in the hospital was an indication of a top shelf facility. She got a flight to SF so some guy in Palo Alto could fix her ankle. Flying that far with a broken ankle, crazy. She is a pretty tough chick, glad she is on my team, would not want to be on the wrong side of any damn thing with her. I should see if her husband can figure it out, this would be right up his alley, but I don't want to bug them with this stuff. Maybe I could trade him out, do the brakes on his 911 or something.

If you can figure this one out KC, I want you to tell me how the GD dog is telling time. 1600 ever day, right there for dinner. Has a clock in her freaking head.

[LWJ]

I can't talk tech. I can talk that this is a potential data breach however. HIPAA is strict about this stuff. I have to think there is the strong possibility of a violation here someway.

Just my thoughts. I get paid to think about things failing.

Good luck.
Larry

[widebody911]

It may be above your technical pay grade but a tool like Wireshark would tell you exactly what is going on network-wise, ie if packets are getting dropped

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by Tobra

.....If you can figure this one out KC, I want you to tell me how the GD dog is telling time. 1600 ever day, right there for dinner. Has a clock in her freaking head.

Don't know if I can figure it out from here, but I'll try. I'll just have to start by attempting to get a mental picture of your configuration. It's gonna be like you working without lab results or x-rays....but I've seen you do it on here .

One thing I DO know...dogs can indeed tell time but I don't know how! First you tell me how a dog can tell days of the week? Had a lab that I would drop of at my parents' when I'd go out of town for a weekend or a week or so. She knew when I was going away (maybe 'cause I took food?) and instead of shadowing me as I left, she just go lay down in her 2nd home and be perfectly content. According to parents, invariably on the day I was to return, she'd "change modes" and just sit looking at their door waiting for my return. This went on for a dozen years...never did figure that one out . Now back to your issue...

First of all, need a little info...what's your laptop, Windows or Mac? Are you tunneling via a VPN connection into your office (or wherever the medical records server is) or just a plain old Internet connection (and I'm assuming the server is behind one or more Firewalls in a "secure zone")? How do you connect to your server, via a DNS name (i.e. Pelicanparts.com) or an IP address? If any of this stuff is "greeK", just bear with me as I ask these questions . I'm going to sssume a Windows client for now. Along the lines of what JR was alluding to earlier (timeout/hang at the server), I'd like you to open up a CMD window (in addition to your laptop client app (or browser) and set up a continuous ping as you're accessing the med records. Hopefully that's "allowed" through to the server. That might give us an indication of network delays, etc. I'll wait for your response before I continue with specifics. If you're using a Mac, I'll be handcuffed and need assistance from others as to how to proceed with the above. As Thom mentioned earlier, I'm essentially "driving blind" without diagnostic aids (a trace of the IP packet flow), but let's see if we can't get a basic understanding of what's going on. We can take this offline (via PM etc.) if you don't want to divulge any of this info on a public forum but since there are several folks on this thread with lots of knowledge/experience/ideas, let's keep it public if possible.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by amberdfjt

It is not blocking me from accessing anything

Sister?

[KFC911]

I'm calling it a night...later!

[KFC911]

Who was Amber (new member w/ 4 posts) and where did she go? I thought that was a mighty strange post and wondered how she ended up on this thread and also had access to the system in question. Now "her" post has been deleted...

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by LWJ

I can't talk tech. I can talk that this is a potential data breach however. HIPAA is strict about this stuff. I have to think there is the strong possibility of a violation here someway.
...

Doubtful...seriously doubtful, and if the data is encrypted (VPN or HTTPS for example) then go worry about something else

Edited: It just occurred to me that Amber may have made (and deleted) other posts that I didn't see...then I know EXACTLY where you're coming from and will retract my attempt at a humorous "jab"

[LWJ]

Good point about encryption. I did mention I can't talk tech.

[Scott R]

So get the IP address of the remote system that's hosting the records. If you have the name, for instance Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Software | Find the Best EHR Systems do this:

C:\bin>ping -a medicalrecords.com

Pinging medicalrecords.com [96.126.104.166] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 96.126.104.166: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=55
Reply from 96.126.104.166: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=55
Reply from 96.126.104.166: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=55
Reply from 96.126.104.166: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 96.126.104.166:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 52ms, Maximum = 55ms, Average = 53ms

Now start using the records system and have a cmd.exe "command prompt" open. Issue the command "ping -t x.x.x.x (being the ip you found before)" See if it drops off when they stop responding