Health Care IT Study Finds Mobility, Convenience Key To Productivity

May 27, 2008 3:13 PM

           

Imprivata Inc., a converged identity and access management appliance company, has completed a national survey examining Identity Management Trends in Health Care 2008. The online survey of IT decision makers in the health care field highlights some significant trends surrounding compliance, network access, application use and increasingly mobile doctors, clinicians and staff.

Health care organizations are strongly considering new data access models for their employees. Specifically, organizations are looking to move away from more conventional, less secure models in favor of those that give employees both the convenience they want and the tools they need to securely access the network and applications at any given time, regardless of their location both within and outside the facility. Survey findings include:

• 85 percent of respondents stated that they are looking to use tablets or mobile devices
• 41 percent of respondents use roaming desktops
• Nearly 75 percent of respondents stated that they offer VPN access, and 35 percent offer portal access for remote users

Health care organizations are increasingly reliant on employees' access to and use of applications to do their daily jobs. With patient data a primary security objective, health care organizations need to ensure secure access to medical records and other sensitive information, making password management and application security a constant obstacle to employee productivity. Survey findings include:

• 26 percent of respondents log into applications 20-50 times per day, while another 5 percent log in more than 50 times per day
• On top of that, 73 percent of respondents claimed their organizations were rolling out new applications within the next six months

Increasing compliance requirements are having considerable impact on the people, process and technology in today's health care organization, which affects organizational structure, responsibilities and purchases. Survey findings include:

• People: Nearly 60 percent of health care organizations now employ a Chief Compliance Officer (CCO)
• Process: Close to 40 percent of IT decision-maker respondents stated they spend from 11-40 percent of their time on compliance
• Technology: 91 percent acknowledge HIPAA regulations influence or strongly influence IT purchasing decisions

In addition, there has been an increased scrutiny on prescription drug orders at the state level, with states passing legislation that requires strong authentication at the time of the electronic transaction, which adds more compliance requirements and process to the highly regulated health care environment. Survey findings include:

• 44 percent of respondents acknowledge that their organizations face state requirements for electronic prescription drug order authentication and verification today.
• 33 percent claim their organization's security policies would be easier to support if applications could authenticate credentials either during or just prior to a transaction in addition to at the start.

Other survey findings include:

• 60 percent of respondents are concerned about unauthorized access from temporary or former employees
• 44 percent of respondents report that their organizations have more than 1,000 users of IT systems
• 60 percent of respondents stated that their health care organization operates more than one facility.

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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