​6-Steps to Ensure Security and Privacy

 

How to Ensure Security and Privacy

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During the transition phase, the EHR vendor must work closely with the healthcare provider for a smooth and secure transition. The company should provide some type of comprehensive user guide for the users in the provider's practice.

There are six ways in which electronic health record entities can provide superior security and privacy solutions once the EHR is implemented.

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1) Enhance administrative controls

• Update policies and procedures

• Guide employees through the stringent privacy and security training process

• Run background checks on all employees

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2) Monitor physical and system access

• Create physically inaccessible systems to unauthorized individuals

• Have exigencies in place for data recovery or restoration

• Provide identification and verification requirements to all system users

• Access the list of authorized users

• Supply passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs)

• Provide automatic software shutdown routines

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3) Identify workstation usage

• Set privacy filters at each workstation

• Distinguish the different capabilities of different workstations

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4) Audit and monitor system users

• Identify any weakness in the system

• Detect any security breach or attempt at a breach

• Regularly audit all authorized users

• Issue specified punishments to employees not following compliance guidelines

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5) Employ device and media controls

• Construct a security plan for data disposal

• Remove data from reusable hardware

• Track all reprocessed hardware

• Back up all data from all hardware

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6) Apply data encryption

• Disguise all data inside medical files through cryptography

Reliable electronic health records companies apply these enhanced security and privacy protocols. Perhaps the most important security protocol is data encryption, which causes data to become unreadable to outside sources.

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Electronic health records specialists also provide remote storage and data backup systems. While this may not necessarily present as strong of a defense against hackers and data breaches as data encryption, it provides security for healthcare organizations against the potential of software failures or natural disasters that could destroy or damage files.