Wednesday, January 31, 2018 9:46 PM

Slash patient privacy auditing man-hours with automated data-driven workflows

Written by Karen Pursch, Director, Patient Privacy Solutions

I have spoken with a lot of patient privacy auditors and compliance officers, and the most common question that I get is:

“Where do I start?”

They go on to say, "Now that all the data is captured from the different systems that contain PHI, and we have information about the users and patients, what’s next?"

Our customers that have Security Audit Manager™ know that they can do proactive auditing using more than 20 different indicators to find inappropriate behavior, which is a great help with automating the workload.

However, even with these indicators, auditors have a problem with prioritizing what is the most important — snooping, VIP alerts, medical identify theft, or users acting out of normal behavior.

In fact, the second question I get from most small to mid-size organizations is:

“We only have one patient privacy officer and I am it. Where do I find the time to run both a proactive and a reactive auditing program while continuing to document the incidents that are found?”

Boosting productivity is essential in this environment. This is where technology can help and should help. Your patient privacy solution needs to learn from prior audit findings, remove false positives, provide data-driven workflows, and quickly identify patterns that where once hidden.

Your patient privacy solution should be able to…

Serve up the most probable events of inappropriate access
Know which algorithms find inappropriate access at your healthcare organization
Show you the incidents that need attention for investigation and documentation
Show you routine maintenance items that need to be performed

All of those things would slash man-hours and boost productivity, right?

At Iatric Systems, we want to make sure emerging technology actually helps improve productivity. New technology, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, can actually impede productivity if it forces auditors to adapt to the technology instead of making sure the technology meets the needs of the workflow. This is what we have done with Security Audit Manager iQ™.

We have combined smart algorithms with automated worklists that inform the patient privacy auditor about what are the top events to investigate. So you don’t need to know where to start, or which reports/algorithms should be run — Security Audit Manager iQ does it for you! It is now realistic that one patient privacy auditor can run a successful proactive auditing program.

View this third video in a series and watch for the launch of this significant evolution in patient privacy monitoring and breach protection — coming in March 2018.

If you missed Video #1 or Video #2 you can view them now.