Healthcare providers have unique IT and technology support requirements far exceeding a normal business.

Just a few of the unique challenges that providers deal with include:

  • Managing mission-critical infrastructure that demands the highest levels of uptime and availability,
  • Securing personally identifiable information (PII), rigorous regulatory compliance and HIPAA standards, complex data backup requirements
  • Managing staff that is now more mobile than ever before.

The best way to meet those challenges is for healthcare providers to partner with an IT and technology firm that has experience managing healthcare IT systems. Below are just some of the ways that the right managed IT service for the healthcare industry can be a major benefit.

The last year was difficult for healthcare cybersecurity, with 656 data breaches affecting over 37 million people in total.

Network Technology That’s Optimized for Uptime and Dependability

Maintaining network uptime is important in any field. It’s absolutely essential in the medical services field, where downtime could lead to degraded service quality, sub-optimal healthcare outcomes, or even serious consequences for a patient’s health.

To maximize the uptime and availability of your network technology, the Complete Network team provides healthcare providers with a fully managed IT services solution that proactively monitors and maintains the technology in your office to ensure it’s always running smoothly.

What does a managed IT service solution that’s optimized for healthcare providers mean?

  • Proactive network monitoring and maintenance to help ensure systems stability
  • Responsive, highly-trained help desk staff who understand your technology and needs
  • Unlimited on-site and remote support, so your staff always has expert backup
  • 24/7 network monitoring to locate and address problems as quickly as possible

Cybersecurity Services Optimized for the Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry experiences one of the highest cyberattack rates, tripling in just the last three years. Despite being a primary target for criminals, most healthcare companies can’t afford to employ an in-house security team, which means they must rely on an external provider to help them build and maintain their cyber defenses.

When you’re vetting an MSP’s cybersecurity capabilities, here are some of the elements that you’ll want to consider:

  • Continuous security monitoring from a security operations center (SOC)
    A SOC provides specialized 24/7 monitoring from a team of dedicated cybersecurity professionals who will keep watch on your systems and respond immediately to abnormal network activity.
  • EHR patching and updating to close cybersecurity backdoors
    Any cybersecurity team will work with your EHR vendor to apply updates to your software (and underlying hardware) as soon as they emerge, to keep your systems as secure as possible.
  • Employee cybersecurity awareness training
    Doctors, nurses, and administrative staff must be trained to spot and defend themselves against the latest cyber threats. Consistent training and testing from a professional managed IT service provider is the most effective way to bring your team up to speed with today’s best practices.

According to recent statistics from the American Medical Association, 83% of physicians have already experienced some form of cyberattack.

Develop Strong HIPAA And HITECH Compliance

HIPAA is a major, ongoing requirement for all healthcare organizations. With the size and frequency of fines continuing to increase, every provider must have a clear strategy for implementing the controls necessary to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI) as it flows through their systems.

HIPAA and HITECH require that ePHI be protected using three different levels of security control– the technical, administrative, and physical.

Technical Controls
Ensure that ePHI is secured against unauthorized access, modification, or deletion while in your network.

Administrative Controls
Policies and procedures to protect ePHI include risk management, incidence response, properly delegated HIPAA duties, security awareness training, and more.

Physical Controls
Ensure the right physical access controls are in place, defining workstation security protocols, and protecting your office space from natural disasters, are other important dimension of compliance.

Vendor Management is Key to HIPAA Compliance

IT vendor management is another important aspect of HIPAA and HITECH compliance. Our team will help act as a single point of contact for your IT vendors and service providers, helping to close compliance gaps, coordinate security controls, and provide your organization with a comprehensive overview of your entire network environment.

The right managed IT service provider will help you:

  • Integrate new vendors into your security and compliance program
  • Perform risk analysis to determine potential threats and vulnerabilities
  • Manage business associate agreements and breach notifications

Interested in HIPAA Compliance? You may be interested in the following articles:

Cloud Computing Solutions Built for The Healthcare Industry

Cloud computing offers healthcare providers a valuable opportunity to streamline their workflows, ease collaboration between departments, and provide a streamlined patient experience while reducing infrastructure costs and streamlining your IT budgeting.

Here are a few of the specific ways that cloud computing can help healthcare providers:

  • Increase interoperability of systems throughout your organization
  • Achieve more reliable disaster recovery and business continuity
  • Securely centralize health records in the cloud and increase patient access
  • Provide remote treatment and telemedicine with greater ease

Complete Network can help you make the most of any new or existing cloud computing program. We have documented processes to ensure the success of any cloud initiative, regardless of its scope or complexity.

How to Choose the Right Managed IT Services Provider for the Healthcare Industry

The MSP market is crowded, with many providers making marketing claims that they can’t back up.

When choosing a managed IT service provider for the healthcare industry to partner with your organization, how do you know which providers can help you take control of your technology and which just claim to understand your industry?

The first thing to do is to inquire into their experience. Any managed IT service provider with a lot of healthcare experience will be able to demonstrate their successes through client testimonials and case studies. That doesn’t mean talking in generalities; it means speaking in detail about specific cases and outcomes they’ve helped healthcare providers achieve.

Digging Deeper into the Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The SLA is a contract between you and your MSP that outlines the exact terms of their support. Any reputable MSP will back up their solution with a clearly worded SLA, which includes information about the damages they’ll pay for violating that agreement.

Want to learn more about what’s in an SLA? Click here to read more about our service-level agreements.

We Help Healthcare Providers Find IT Peace of Mind

For over 20 years, we’ve partnered with healthcare organizations throughout Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina. Managed IT solutions from Complete Network help you face the complexities of healthcare technology, cybersecurity, and HIPAA compliance with confidence you might never achieve on your own.

Have a question for our experts? Reach us at 877.877.1840 or  [email protected]. We look forward to speaking with you soon!