Why did you start your practice? To treat patients and help people, right? You work to make the lives of those you serve better by providing them with the best care and guidance that you possibly can.
One thing that I’m pretty certain of: you didn’t open your practice to focus on and manage your IT solutions.
While computer and network solutions aren’t top of mind in running your practice, you need to have systems that operate securely and consistently to be successful. Here are just a few of the items to consider with your systems:
Why HIPAA Compliant IT Is Important
In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was passed, requiring the US Health and Human Services to develop regulations protecting the privacy and security of certain health information. While at the time, much of that pertained to physical documents and records, technology has shifted to incorporate guidelines around electronic health records. With that, a new set of standards was developed pertaining to the security of electronic protected health information, or e-PHI. To read more on HHS HIPAA requirements, visit their site here.
Among the items you are responsible for within HIPAA compliance are:
- Protect against reasonable threats to the information
- Conduct at risk analysis
- Implement security measures to address risks
- Protect against unauthorized access to e-PHI being transmitted over an electronic network
- Notification requirements of any data breach
Network Management and System Up-Time
In addition to HIPAA compliance, your office’s systems simply need to work when you need them to. Phone or network downtime can leave your staff frustrated and unable to work as well as the potential of being off-putting to patients. In their minds, if they witness your phones and network being down, what else might you be missing?
Selecting the right systems and solutions for your practice can be an arduous task, not to mention the management of it all.
Thankfully there are organizations like ours to help out. As a trusted IT consultant and Managed Service Provider (MSP), Diamond IT is able to partner with practices like yours to advise and implement solutions to fit your needs.
Diamond IT For Healthcare Offices
- For smaller, single-office entities, our MSP solutions are often a great fit.
- For practices that are a little larger or have multiple sites and may have a small IT staff already, our co-managed solutions often work well.
- If you have things in place and simply want the peace of mind of knowing that you are following guidelines to stay in compliance, our vCISO solutions may be something to look at.
Simply put, we can help you select the best solutions for the needs of your practice. Let’s be honest, all you really want is for your systems to work when you need them, run smoothly, and to know that someone is looking over your office’s needs so that you can focus on your office’s main objective: serving patients.
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