Healthcare Industry

Budget Constraints

With IT departments struggling with the installation, maintenance, and upgrade of EHR systems, many care groups are finding it difficult to come up with extra money for technology. In addition, most hospitals operate under rigid annual budgets that make front-end investing difficult, as expenditures would have to be reduced in other areas.

However, alongside proper infrastructure assessments, technologies such as Managed Print and Managed Network services can assist in reducing the financial impact of tech support, maintenance, and overall costs on bottom lines, freeing up funds for use on other advantageous technologies.

Compliance Issues

Under both the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Acts, regulatory compliance requires that healthcare agencies safeguard sensitive patient data to the best of their abilities.

Recent breaches of electronic protected health information (ePHI) have shown that careful attention must be paid to providing additional safeguards and disabling non secure services and protocols.

This process is vastly simplified by a combination of Managed Network Services, Managed Print, and Document Management services that emphasize up-to-date security protocols and strictly managed access for secure data distribution.

Other technologies include bizhub SECURE healthcare, a groundbreaking way to further secure healthcare networks to ensure patient privacy.

Going Digital

To digitally transform, healthcare organizations must look for a system that can handle a variety of increasingly complex technologies — from the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to the particular authentication and data distribution challenges that come with telemedicine.

Again, Managed Print and Managed Network Services, in conjunction with a Document Management system can provide the kind of strategic — and flexible — technologies that not only improve productivity and progress toward structured goals, but also work toward reducing overall costs to stay within budget.

Security Threats

Securing personal healthcare information and protecting communications while transferring patient data between locations are essential to regulatory compliance and cybersecurity best practices.

Healthcare data breaches are often predicated by user authentication deficiencies, endpoint leakage, and excessive user permissions.

Fortunately, Document Management software and programs like bizhub SECURE can assist in tightening up access to sensitive data, while Managed Print and Managed Network services provide an additional layer of security by keeping hardware and software up to date and providing further ways of limited and controlling access.

Integrating Output Applications with EHR/EMR

Today’s EHR/EMR is an encounter-based interface, but the drawback is that they haven’t been developed to support point-of-care clinical decision-making using support from a range of existing sources. To accomplish this, interoperability among systems is critical.

Healthcare agencies must be able to aggregate the data coming from biometric monitoring, health plans, other health systems, and more to improve patient diagnosis and care.

An Output Management solution provides a multi-channel delivery system for EHRs that can integrate with business application, workflow management tools, and even support watermarking or coding critical documents with compliance-specific language.