HIPAA-COMPLIANT PRIVATE CLOUD DELIVERS LIFE-SAVING MEDICAL HELP

Transcription

1 HIPAA-COMPLIANT PRIVATE CLOUD DELIVERS LIFE-SAVING MEDICAL HELP Taking Business to the Cloud Greensboro Drive, Ste McLean, VA AISN (2476)

2 NON-PROFIT RELIES ON AISN S HIPAA/HITECH-COMPLIANT PRIVATE CLOUD TO HELP DELIVER LIFESAVING MEDICAL ASSISTANCE Who Should Read This? CIOs, IT directors and procurement personnel tasked with modernizing their organization s legacy systems and moving them to a private cloud infrastructure, while simultaneously achieving cost savings. The Core Issues Faced The high cost of running an internal HIPAA/HITECH-compliant data center The hassle faced by IT staff in trying to keep up with changing HIPAA compliance rules Fear that downtime and data loss during a disaster would cause irreparable damage and cost millions of dollars 1

3 THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE AISN engaged with a not-for-profit health care client that plays a heroic role in helping hundreds of thousands of citizens in need get critical medical care. Its cornerstone program for uninsured patients was successful in generating more than a quarter billion dollars per year in free assistance but depended heavily upon 90s-era proprietary software, tediously slow manual workflows and a processing/ approval process of up to seven days. The costs of hosting the program on premises in a HIPAA/HITECH-compliant environment and training staff to patch and maintain it were becoming onerous. Also, with no business continuity or disaster recovery plan in place, any program downtime could potentially render electronic Protected Health Information (ephi) vulnerable and prevent patients from receiving essential care. Cut costs by 50% over the next 5 years Disaster recovery, low budget, HIPAA/HITECHcompliant, secure ephi Why AISN Was Selected After methodically evaluating numerous top tier hosting providers, the client selected AISN as its HIPAA/HITECHcompliant cloud hosting provider based on AISN s: Expertise in providing custom, fully HIPAA/ HITECH-compliant cloud hosting and services in a high availability environment Attention to detail when engineering environments for complex applications Deep experience providing disaster recovery and business continuity planning for HIPAA-compliant organizations Highly responsive approach to client service (e.g., the same experts who built the solution would be readily available to step in when help was needed) Willingness to accommodate the client s budget constraints and work toward a goal of slashing the program s operational costs by 50% or more over the next five years Proactivity in providing a risk assessment analysis and HIPAA Business Associate Agreement 2

4 THE SOLUTION A modern, online portal engineered for efficiency AISN s HIPAA/HITECH-Compliant High Security Private Cloud Secure online backup and disaster recovery HIPAA auditing services AISN and its longtime partner, a national technology consulting firm, teamed to develop a new, online portal (with automated workflows and complex, enhanced features) and deploy it in a fully HIPAA/HITECH-compliant, highly secure private cloud. From the beginning, AISN s extremely responsive team of hosting experts dedicated themselves to the project, seamlessly becoming an extension of the client s own IT department. Because the portal is complex and contains sensitive electronic Protected Health Information (ephi), a sophisticated, custom environment was required. AISN s solution is an entirely customized private cloud infrastructure employing multiple front end and database servers as well as encryption. Not only is the custom cloud fast, but it also meets the client s needs for high availability, security, disaster resilience and cost-effectiveness. In the business continuity component, a solid cloud backup/disaster recovery plan is now in place. AISN routinely backs up the client s hosted environment at the primary data center and then stores the replicated copy in another geographically distant data center. In the highly-unlikely event of a natural or man-made disaster occurring at the primary data center, the portal would experience instant failover to the alternate data center, enabling portal service to continue with virtually no downtime. 3

5 CLIENT S SOLUTION IS SPECIFICALLY ENGINEERED TO: Lower the total cost of ownership by more than 50% over five years Simplify administration, resulting in 67% less time spent maintaining servers & conducting audits/inventories 67% less time spent maintaining servers & conducting audits Pass 100% of HIPAA/HITECH compliance audits through enhanced security measures Maintain high availability, 24/7/365 Reduce risk to business operations by offering a proven architecture and hosting environment that s prevalidated for compliance, performance and reliability AISN also provided the client with HIPAA auditing services: Allow for fast, efficient processing of heavy workloads to improve productivity A thorough security risk/vulnerability assessment to help safeguard the portal and ephi Improve business agility through rapid, on-demand scaling and virtualization technologies that support reconfiguration (making it easy to adjust resource allocations to match workloads) Solution testing and optimization to lower risk and prevent implementation delays Extensive post-deployment consulting on changing HIPAA compliance requirements Protect ephi via multiple levels of security Ongoing HIPAA compliance expertise to mitigate future compliance risks Provide secure online backup and rapid disaster recovery to prevent service interruptions 4

6 Processing a single patient case takes an average of only four minutes Key Results The new cloud-based portal helps more low income, chronically ill patients get the medical assistance they need to stay healthy. Other key results include: By deploying the program in a fully HIPAA/HITECH-compliant cloud, AISN empowered the client to save time and money while vastly improving its level of service. AISN s deployment stayed on time and within budget. The portal deployed smoothly in under a week with no significant capital expenditure, enabling the client to meet the project s go-live date and focus on the design and user experience rather than the management and compliance of the cloud infrastructure. Optimizing the portal and private cloud for performance enhanced the end user experience significantly. The former manual process, which used to take hours, is now easier and faster. Rather than hours, processing a single patient case takes an average of only four minutes. Further more, case approval times have been reduced from up to a week to less than four hours. AISN s private cloud solution enables the client s business to stay up and running in the event of a disaster or other unplanned outage. The client can rest assured that its hosted portal protects ephi in full, allowing the client to focus on the administrative aspects of compliance and enabling low-income patients to receive life-saving care. 5

7 FOR A FREE MIGRATION ASSESSMENT, OUR SALES TEAM AT Taking Business to the Cloud Greensboro Drive, Ste McLean, VA AISN (2476)