Tackling Healthcare CIO Challenges: Securing Infrastructure, IT Expertise and Costs

Nearly one in five healthcare CIOs have had a security breach within the past 12 months, according to statistics compiled by McKesson in Understanding Your CIO. Their top infrastructure IT focus is on systems that secure personal health information (22 percent), followed by servers/virtual servers (18 percent) and a focus on mobile devices (16 percent).

CIOs consider the lack of staffing resources as the most significant barrier to implementing IT systems, and more than 50 percent say they expect an increase in IT staff within the next 12 months. However, more than six out of 10 say they’re concerned about their organization’s skills and ability to capitalize on their technology investments.

The lack of financial support is a secondary barrier to successfully implementing IT.

People are an important part of the IT puzzle – finding the particular expertise needed to run secure systems housing protected health information (PHI) takes time and resources. Partnering with a hosting provider that can provide their HIPAA audit report on compliance verifying they conduct regular business associate training of their tech staff satisfies a few healthcare CIO concerns:

CIOs don’t need to worry about hiring as many in-house IT personnel to manage their servers if they use the managed services/support of a hosting company.
It’s more cost-effective to have a fixed rate for infrastructure and management rather than dealing with fluctuating and unpredictable costs to manage in-house IT (read Leasing vs. Building a Data Center).
If your hosting provider has already undergone an independent HIPAA audit, you don’t have to pay your auditors to conduct one.
With a HIPAA compliant hosting provider, you know they’ve put in the work needed to meet compliance, including investing in their data center and hosting solution security.

For a complete guide to HIPAA technical, administrative and physical security, read our HIPAA Compliant Hosting white paper. This white paper explores the impact of HITECH and HIPAA on data centers. It includes a description of a HIPAA compliant data center IT architecture, contractual requirements, benefits and risks of data center outsourcing, and vendor selection criteria.

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References:
Understanding Your CIO
2013 HIMSS Leadership Survey