Healthcare organizations are slowly turning to the cloud to run
applications. That's especially true for smaller healthcare
providers who don't have the IT staff or resources to roll out and
support new in-house applications, let alone the hardware,
networking, or other IT infrastructure that goes along with it.
Yet, while some healthcare providers are beginning to sign up
for SaaS subscriptions for business- and administrative-related
applications, they're holding back, still refusing to move clinical
software and patient data.
That's the case with Springfield Clinic, a multi-specialty
physicians group with 280 doctors serving two million patients in
14 counties in central Illinois. Springfield Clinic has been
growing rapidly, adding about 30 to 40 physicians a year through
recruitment efforts and mergers. It needed a way to bring these
doctors into the group quickly and cost efficiently. So, about a
year ago, the group began tapping managed application services from
cloud-based services provider NaviSite to run and support the
clinic's Oracle PeopleSoft financials, payroll, and HR
applications.
The cloud makes it easier and more affordable for Springfield
Clinic to add capacity to its systems when new doctors join the
clinic, said Springfield Clinic CIO Jim Hewitt in an interview with
InformationWeek Healthcare. Newly added doctors to the clinic
"still need training and conversion" from their previous financial
systems, "but we don't need to worry about expanding the IT
infrastructure to do this, the hardware or software," he said.
The clinic also is using cloud-based patient portal software
from FollowMyHealth to allow patients to view their medical
records, securely communicate with physicians, and schedule
appointments.
But for their cloud-based patient portal, patients must
voluntarily sign up to use the services and give their consent for
data to be accessed by them via the Web. "That takes risk out,"
said Hewitt about some of the issues Springfield worries about. So
far, about 14,000 patients have signed up for the service.
But like many other healthcare facilities, Springfield Clinic is
not ready to put the data of its two million patients in the cloud
by moving their EMR to the cloud, said Hewitt. "Our EMR vendor
[Allscripts] is looking at SaaS, but there's been push-back from
providers like us," he said. Providers have concerns about putting
patients' personal health information on the cloud because of
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
concerns and liability, he said.
"I'm the custodian of your health records, but you the patient
own it," he said."If I as a healthcare provider sign up a SaaS
vendor, I've created a business-associate relationship, and
patients don't know who has their data," he said. On the other
hand, if a patient signs up to use a portal service, they're
informed about their data being on the Web, he said.
"If I'm going to take the records of two million patients and
put it out on the cloud, there needs to be a great level of trust,"
he said. HIPAA violations--besides risking the trust of
patients--can be incredibly expensive to handle for a healthcare
provider, he said.
"If I have an incident with two million patient records on the
cloud, and I have to pay one year of credit protection at USD 40 a
pop for each of those two million patients who might've had their
identity violated, that's USD 80 million to start," not to mention
federal fines and other fees and costs associated with fixing the
problem, he said. With those risks in mind, "we'll do due diligence
on SaaS," before moving the organization's electronic medical
records or other clinical systems into the cloud.
Source:
InformationWeek
US