FairWarning Helps Northeastern Academic Health System Stay in Compliance with HIPAA Regulations

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Duane Wilson
6 years ago
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1 Northeastern System Client Profile This Northeastern System located in the United States is one of the largest healthcare organizations in its region, offering the most sophisticated medical technology & support. Challenge After experiencing two significant privacy breaches, this health system was looking for a proactive approach to regulatory compliance and prevention of future incidents. Solution FairWarning Managed Privacy Services (MPS) Results Maintains a proactive privacy monitoring program Augments available tools and resources used by staff Increases privacy policy awareness Experiences excellent customer service FairWarning Helps Northeastern System Stay in Compliance with HIPAA Regulations One of the largest healthcare systems in the Northeast United States, needed a proactive approach to regulatory compliance relating to protected health information.

Overview As a large healthcare system, it was important for the organization to constantly be vigilant about compliance with federal and state regulations relating to protected health information.

violations. The Challenges Like many enterprise health systems, the organization operates in a very intense regulatory landscape with limited staff and resources.

2 Overview As a large healthcare system, it was important for the organization to constantly be vigilant about compliance with federal and state regulations relating to protected health information. After two significant privacy breaches, a solution was needed that would help the organization take a proactive approach to monitoring patient record access and respond quickly to access privilege violations. The Challenges Like many enterprise health systems, the organization operates in a very intense regulatory landscape with limited staff and resources. The goal of their initial investment with FairWarning was to implement a proactive monitoring solution to automatically identify privacy and security breaches that could possibly turn into HIPAA violations. The challenge was that their existing staff and resources had to compete with other timeconsuming priorities making it difficult to reach their desired monitoring state. 2 We needed a solid system with good recommendations from other users that could be implemented fairly quickly, giving us the efficiency we were looking for. We found that with FairWarning Managed Privacy Services. Chief Privacy Officer One of the most important precursors to us searching for a more robust solution and revising our privacy-related policies was that we had two major internal breaches that caused us to have to make notifications to patients as well as to the state Attorney General and the federal government, explains the Chief Privacy Officer. So, my first priority was to make certain that we had implemented everything that we told the government that we were going to do That included FairWarning Managed Privacy Services.

3 Solution 3 It was important for the organization's privacy team to find a solution that would help the healthcare system evaluate its privacy monitoring processes from good to great as fast as possible. We needed assistance with the massive analysis and reporting burden, shares the Chief Privacy Officer. And, FairWarning Managed Privacy Services offered the most effective solution. FairWarning Managed Privacy Services (MPS) is an affordable solution for health care providers of all sizes. FairWarning s expert team of HIPAA compliance, security, and product analysts provide worry-free experts, thereby freeing up internal privacy teams to work on higher value projects. Results After a smooth implementation, the organization began to experience a range of benefits right away. FairWarning Managed Privacy Services permits us to proactively monitor for instances of inappropriate access. Without it, we would not have the ability to do that. Maintains a Proactive Privacy Program By offboarding alert monitoring, analysis, and reporting to the specialists at FairWarning, the organization has a privacy system that helps keep them in compliance with HIPAA regulations and helps keep staff in compliance with internal policies relating to patient information. MPS permits us to proactively monitor for instances of inappropriate access, says the CPO. This technology has made it so much easier for us to do that. Maximizes Existing Staff and Resources Given the size of the healthcare system, working with a small staff was a major concern. Now the privacy team is able to maximize existing staff and resources by utilizing MPS as their solution. Having MPS has greatly enhanced what we can do as a team, says the CPO. That s because MPS frees up the existing staff s time, allowing them to focus on other important privacy-related activities such as ongoing awareness and education programs that help to reduce the risk of privacy breaches.

4 Conducts More Efficient Investigations 4 Investigations of possible privacy breaches are now much more efficient. That s because FairWarning specialists monitor all system alerts and provide the privacy team with a fully documented investigation report that contains information about what types of access occurred and what specific follow-up steps are necessary. MPS streamlines our investigation process, explains the CPO. Now, it takes much less time for us to pinpoint where the inappropriate access occurred and when it occurred. From there we can skip a couple of steps and immediately identify who the employee is, and who their supervisor is, so that we can address the issue quickly. Increases Privacy Policy Awareness With MPS in place, the privacy team can partner with the HR department to increase awareness among existing employees, and educate new employees about its privacy policies. The use of FairWarning has helped us heighten employee awareness about privacy concerns. says the CPO. We believe the fact that we can effectively communicate with managers about pending investigations related to staff they supervise has had a positive effect by lowering the number of occurrences. Experiences Excellent Service from the FairWarning Team The CPO continues to be impressed by the team of specialists at FairWarning. No question or request for assistance is too problematic for them, they share. Having a single contact person who is able to address our issues on the spot is a huge benefit. When I need a report that has to be specifically crafted for my leadership team, all I need to do is ask for it. I'm definitely happy with the level of support that we get. Having MPS has greatly enhanced what we can do as a team. The information that FairWarning produces is voluminous. Thankfully, MPS is there to help us weed through it all. I can t imagine doing what we are able to do now without a much larger staff. When asked about her overall satisfaction with MPS, the CPO was full of praise. We needed a solid system with good recommendations from other users that could be implemented fairly quickly and would give us the efficiency we were looking for. We found that with MPS.

5 Northeastern System About this Northeastern System This healthcare system is the clinical partner of a university in the Northeastern region of the United States, and one of the largest healthcare systems in the area. The system is a non-profit healthcare network providing primary through quaternary care. 5 About FairWarning FairWarning strives to protect the health, wealth, and personal information for every person on Earth. The company s industry-leading, affordable application security solutions provide data protection and governance for Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Salesforce, Office 365, and hundreds of other applications. FairWarning solutions protect organizations of all sizes against data theft and misuse through real-time and continuous user activity monitoring and improve compliance effectiveness with complex federal and state privacy laws such as HIPAA, PCI, FINRA, SOX, FISMA and EU Data Protection Act. FairWarning catches people stealing your data Feather Sound Drive, Suite 600 Clearwater, Florida USA For more information, please visit Solutions@FairWarning.com Copyright FairWarning, Inc. All rights reserved. Various trademarks held by their respective owners.

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