Athens Regional Health System is one of northeast Georgia's largest healthcare systems. ARHS is made up of an acute care hospital with 350-plus beds, four urgent care centers, a network of quality physicians and specialists, and a home health agency. ARHS was named the Large Hospital of the Year for the State of Georgia by the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals. Today, ARHS is recognized as one of the top 100 hospitals in the nation preferred by women.

The Challenge

Having a quality IT system is critical in running any efficient business, and a large hospital such as ARHS is no exception. Louis Duhé, Vice President and CIO, says that the hospital needed a new solution to their IT needs—one that was more efficient than their current in-house developed help desk application.

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Good customer service is important in any industry, but especially in healthcare. Patients are essentially the customers of the healthcare industry and their happiness is key. Providing better customer service will go a long way towards improving the healthcare experience.

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When the HIPAA Omnibus Rule went into effect in 2013, it brought some interesting changes involving liability where covered entities and their business associates were concerned. The Omnibus Rule also brought some changes to the requirements for using PHI in medical research. Here is an overview of HIPAA Omnibus and what it means for researchers.

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As of late, the healthcare industry has become the target to hackers trying to steal patients' private information such as social security numbers and health records. Now more than ever, healthcare organizations must do all they can to keep patient information secure. Using software in the cloud can provide many benefits, but with the sensitivity of healthcare records, organizations might be hesitant to move to the cloud. However, cloud software companies are rising to this challenge, making switching to using the cloud for health IT a more viable option.

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If your business requires working with an eHealthRecord (EHR), consider investing in some change management software to help out your IT department. Having a change management module as part of your help desk will make it easy for employees to put in a Request for Change (RFC) for the eHealthRecord. Change management has many benefits for any IT department.

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The healthcare industry is moving towards using the cloud. More and more healthcare CIOs are choosing cloud systems for their businesses. Storing data in the cloud makes it easier to access and easier to share. Still, there have been some concerns about how secure the cloud is and if using the cloud is HIPAA-compliant. The transition to using the cloud is underway, so let us take a closer look at healthcare and the cloud.

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The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed in 1996. Coming up on twenty years later, HIPAA is not a new concept, but there are some ongoing issues. In 2009, HIPAA was joined by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). This additional legislature brought changes to how HIPAA is enforced and the penalties that HIPAA non-compliance incurs. The Department of Health and Human Services has an Office of Civil Rights (OCR) that is responsible for enforcing HIPAA. Non-compliance with HIPAA is most evident after a data breach. Healthcare systems that suffer a data breach are investigated by OCR and fined large amounts of money for HIPAA violations. Let us examine healthcare and HIPAA data breaches and what they mean for the businesses that experience them.

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MetroHealth System, a hospital system providing quality care for over 175 years, has a history of constant growth and expansion. With humble beginnings in 1837 as the Cleveland, Ohio city infirmary, serving a population of 6,000 people, it experienced exponential growth with the arrival of the industrial revolution. Today, MetroHealth is one of the largest and most comprehensive public health systems in the country.

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With increasing data breaches happening every year at major companies like Kohl's, Abercrombie and Fitch, Cigna and Anthem, it is more important than ever to know if your company is HIPAA compliant or not. Federal law requires companies dealing with private health information, or any business that hosts this information on their servers, to be HIPAA compliant.

Even if your company does not need to comply with HIPAA regulations, it is a good idea to protect other sensitive information like credit card numbers and customer employment information as strictly as private health information. Anthem's data breach in March exposed the records of more than 80 million people, many of whom were not even Anthem customers.

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