Focus: Managed Services for the Healthcare Industry

Challenges such as constantly shifting government regulations, growing staffing issues, increasing expenses, competition and rapid changes to the economic payment model are driving the need for a review of the industry’s technology needs and assumptions.  Significant change can often be challenging in any industry. But for both patients and providers it can be especially disruptive.  The fact also remains that these changes can also produce tangible benefits for all stakeholders.  Engaging a competent partner to provide assistance and expertise in managing through these changes will help your organization effectively address its technology strategy and navigate many of the potential negative impacts caused by these industry changes.

A competent managed services provider that brings relevant industry experience and expertise will help your organization address the shifting requirements in maintaining and monitoring critical technology platforms responsible for electronic health records (EHRs), lab information systems, patient billing, HIPAA compliance, practice management, HL7 interfacing with clinical devices, storage and physician mobility. They should be expected to help reduce liability associated with regulations impacting the industry by maintaining secure and compliant systems. If you select the right provider to partner with they should also be able to contribute to reduced healthcare costs, decreased downtime and improving the services and experience you provide to your patients.

So, how do you get started? 

Begin by researching a few managed services providers to see what they offer and the industries where they have experience. Their websites are an obvious starting point. Be prepared to also dig a little deeper into the range of technical expertise offered by their employees. This can often be found by the scanning the business partners listed on their website (Cisco, VMware, NetApp, etc.) or the industry / technical certifications they promote (Partner Certification or Specialization level, GOLD Level, CCIE, CCNA, etc.).

The next step, once you have identified a group of possible service providers, is to identify one service that can serve as a starting point to assist with your technology management strategy. For example, below is a list of the typical service offerings:

• Backup and Recovery - Provides redundant access and portability for critical patient information while also reducing exposure to HIPPA violations as outlined in this past blog post.
• Communications - Carrier solutions can address your telecommunications and networking requirements with voice, data and video connectivity built specifically to align with your needs.
• Engineering Support & Maintenance - Skilled technology professionals are available to supplement your internal team by assisting with network, infrastructure and application support as well as performing hardware upgrades and replacements.
• Mobility - Wireless devices are managed and mobile applications are secured and maintained to deliver increased efficiency.
• Network Monitoring and Management – Devices and components that exist on your network to manage communications and applications (e.g. servers, routers, etc.) are proactively monitored 24x7 to deliver the benefits outlined in this past blog post.
• Security - Protects information and applications utilizing technologies ranging from anti-virus software to firewalls and encrypted data transmission.

Limiting the initial interaction to a single service or two gives you the opportunity to begin interacting with a few managed services providers, learn more about their offerings and capabilities and make a more informed decision based on experience.

Using Cloud Backup to Protect Patient Information

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires organizations to implement contingency plans for securing their patient information and data. The objectives for the contingency planning include disaster recovery and data storage. These backup requirements are a helpful starting point for health-related organizations to build an cost-effective plan for storing and protecting their patient health information. 

Healthcare providers who engage in electronic transactions must insure privacy while also employing compliant backup methodologies to guarantee the access, portability and confidentiality of patient records. This means that organizations must be able to restore computer records after an emergency situation. They must also provide secure means for protecting patient health information and backup this data real-time on a continuous basis.

One technology that helps the healthcare industry address these HIPAA requirements is cloud-based backup. As we mentioned in an earlier post the cloud refers to technologies that deliver computing over a network as an on-demand service. The model allows for secure sharing of applications, resources and data with computers and mobile devices almost like a utility.

In order to support HIPAA compliance and be a relevant alternative for the healthcare industry  automated solutions must effortlessly and inexpensively achieve very high data reliability and security.  With a well-designed Cloud backup strategy, IT infrastructure can now dynamically change to meet evolving storage needs and security requirements.

Here are a few of the features  that should be included in a properly designed HIPAA compliant healthcare Cloud backup solution:: 

• Fully automated data backups for servers and desktops
• Off-site storage at highly-secured data centers
• Web-based management tools for immediate restoration of damaged or deleted files.
• Long-term storage available in accordance with HIPAA
• Data protection using compression and AES-256 bit encryption
• Integrity controls setup for data
• E-mail Archiving to ensure sensitive data is retained and backed up consistently
• Data availability enhanced with mirroring to secondary secure facilities.

Data loss can result in decreased productivity, patient / customer attrition and revenue loss. Contact IPLogic to discuss how to update your contingency plan and learn about how cloud-based backup and recovery can secure your patient information.

Is your healthcare institution doing all it can do to mitigate against sentinel events?

Evan Bossonis

Business Development Leader, Team Lead - Unified Communications

ebossonis@iplogic.com

A sentinel event is defined by The Joint Commission (TJC) as: “any unanticipated event in a healthcare setting resulting in death or serious physical or psychological injury to a patient or patients, not related to the natural course of the patient's illness.”

“Ineffective communication is the most frequently cited root cause for sentinel events. Effective communication that is timely, accurate, complete, unambiguous, and understood by the recipient reduces error and results in improved patient safety.” - 2009 Joint Commission (TJC) - Hospital National Patient Safety Goals.

Communications efficiency on the hospital floor

Nurses and other HCPs spend too much time waiting for access to specialists – and so do patients

Are your nurses spending too much time waiting for responses?

Evan Bossonis

Business Development Leader – Unified Communications

ebossonis@iplogic.com

 “…the majority of nurses felt that they would save 30–60 minutes per workday - time they could spend caring for patients directly - if they had instant access to experts. Eighty - four percent felt that the time they spent trying to reach people had a direct impact on patient care because of delays and time spent away from patients, while 65 percent estimated that they spent upward of 20 minutes each day trying to contact people, with many spending well over an hour.” This finding is from a study done by Forrester Research and commissioned by Cisco Systems.

Do you find this to be the case on your hospital floor, or in your practice? How much additional revenue could be captured if you could improve productivity by one hour per nurse per shift over a years time? What could be the impact on patient satisfaction?