By Ed Simcox, US Healthcare Practice Leader, Logicalis Healthcare Solutions
The state of New York recently enacted important legislation that will have far-reaching effects for the healthcare industry at large. You may have heard about the state’s I-STOP prescription monitoring program which mandates electronic prescribing for all pharmaceutical prescriptions, both controlled and non-controlled substances. Other states have electronic prescription laws in place already, but did you know that New York’s is the first to carry both financial penalties and jail time for physicians who violate it?
These kinds of stiff penalties make it critically important to prepare now for what experts believe will be the eventual expansion of this legislation nationwide. So, the logical question is, how do you prepare? What’s the first step? At Logicalis, we’re pointing our healthcare customers toward the adoption of two-factor ID single-sign-on (SSO) which will allow them to participate securely in Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS) now, before they’re mandated to do so.
And to bolster our ability to help you take this critical first step, we’ve formed a strategic alliance with industry-leading SSO and identity access management provider, HealthCast Solutions. HealthCast leads the market in two-factor-ID authentication for Epic’s EPCS module, and the relationship we’ve forged allows us to bring you the technology you need to allow your physicians to prescribe controlled substances from their homes or offices as securely as they can in the hospital setting.
SSO technology also has broader implications in the healthcare market; EPCS is a compelling reason to implement SSO, but if you have clinicians who are frustrated by the processes required to simply log in and out of patient records every day, there are numerous benefits beyond EPCS that make it a worthwhile technology to investigate now.
In fact, there are six reasons I think SSO is something every healthcare organization should be looking at today:
- First, SSO can enhance patient care by giving clinicians secure, streamlined access to electronic health records (EHRs).
- Second, it can improve clinician satisfaction by making sign-on significantly easier and faster.
- Third, it helps healthcare organizations conserve both time and money by saving an estimated 30 to 45 minutes per physician per day with simplified log-in processes; it only takes a moment to add up what that can mean to your bottom line.
- Fourth, it can boost IT department productivity by reducing the number of password-related service desk calls.
- Fifth, it can increase the speed with which healthcare organizations achieve true meaningful use with EHRs.
- And, sixth, SSO meets critical HIPAA and EPCS regulatory requirements, including two-factor ID.
If you’d like to talk about the possible benefits of SSO within your own organization, just use this form to send me a note and put “SSO” in the “interest” line, or give us a call at 866-456-4422.
Want to learn more? Find out how “any access” solutions can help simplify clinicians’ secure access to patient data via any device, anywhere, at any time, then examine the four key technologies behind healthcare any access solutions and download a white paper that explores the business case for healthcare access solutions. You can also read an article that answers the question, “Clinicians may want simplified access to sensitive data, but do they need it?”: http://ow.ly/ZSz1r.