HIPAA Blog

[ Tuesday, September 21, 2004 ]

 

Some quick hits:

California hospitals are outsourcing their IT services. I've seen deals like this done before (and undone before), but in many ways it makes sense to let the experts handle things like this. If you tend in this direction, however, you MUST keep a close tab on your outsource provider; you must insure that your own HIPAA-compliant culture is adopted by your business associate, since the risk of disaster is great. At least it's not offshore.

Phoenix hospitals are going high-tech. Of course, hospitals have always been high-tech, at least when you're talking about medical equipment (from Gamma knives to Positron Emission Tomography scanners), but several Phoenix hospitals are integrating high techonolgy into admissions and patient comfort applications. A focus on customer service? In the hospital business? That's a good idea.

And here's a positive article on wireless networks in hospitals. Obviously, there are many advantages to wi-fi technology. But you must remember: the easier it is for proper parties to access your network, the easier it is for improper parties to access it. If you go wireless, particularly in environments where physical access is fairly unlimited, you are asking for trouble if you don't take extremely sensitive care with controlling access, looking for intruders, and scouring the logs for improper use or access.

Jeff [9:02 AM]

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