Healthcare Technology Featured Article

March 06, 2013

Growing Number of Healthcare Organizations Opt for Microsoft Office 365


Driven by increasingly complex compliance regulations and a need to lower IT operating costs, more healthcare organizations are opting for Microsoft’s Office 365, a cloud-based productivity and collaboration infrastructure, Microsoft officials announced this week.

U.S.-based healthcare businesses must meet regulatory and privacy obligations under the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), designed to protect the privacy of healthcare information for individuals.

Healthcare organizations, both large and small, including FHI 360, Gwinnett Hospital System Inc., Kindred Healthcare, Inc. and Mihills Webb, are using Microsoft Office 365 as it is the only major cloud business productivity solution that addresses rigorous HIPAA regulations, and programmatically offers a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to customers, according to Dennis Schmuland, M.D, chief health strategy officer of Microsoft U.S. Health & Life Sciences.

“By incorporating the required HIPAA privacy and security protections, and IT control safeguards in Office 365, Microsoft is enabling health organizations to move to the cloud at their own pace, and with confidence that Office 365 is designed to meet or exceed their requirements for patient-centered collaboration while simultaneously helping them address their HIPAA regulatory requirements for privacy and security compliance,” Schmuland said in a statement.

Several healthcare organizations recently implemented Microsoft Office 365 solutions for the benefits of unifying and streamlining, standardized communication, improved collaboration and stronger management.

By adopting Office 365, FHI 360, for example, was able to cohesively harness the power of cloud computing for the entire organization.

“We were looking to move every employee to the cloud, and Office 365 offered the best blend of feature set, corporate support and reliability,” explained Michael Mazza, CIO at FHI 360. “Microsoft demonstrated a commitment in deployment and support that could not be matched. Microsoft’s ability to support our top five languages while understanding future considerations across our disciplines and geographies, within the organization and with our partners, was also important.”

Gwinnett Hospital System, which needed to collaborate remotely without having to travel, was not leveraging the capabilities of instant messaging and conferencing technologies. The firm sought an effective cloud solution to interoperate with its existing technologies, so it chose Microsoft Lync Online.

“In general, hospitals tend to be behind in deploying new technologies,” said Rick Allen, assistant vice president of information systems at Gwinnett. “But we are competing for talent, and new technologies help attract young employees. With Lync and the cloud, we can provide easy collaboration regardless of location at a cost we can handle.”

Office 365 also offers security features and privacy compliance to healthcare organizations that must comply with HIPAA laws.

For example, Mihills Webb Medical, a five-physician family practice, deployed Office 365 for communication and compliance benefits. Microsoft’s cloud offering not only improves communication and collaboration, but provides robust security and helps meet privacy and other regulatory requirements as demanded by HIPAA, the federal law that applies to health organizations which need to protect patient data.

“Compliance in particular was critical for us, and it’s a non-negotiable requirement that we demand from our technology solution providers,” said Dr. Cody Mihills, family physician at Mihills Webb. “Because Microsoft cloud services are HIPAA-compliant and came with a HIPAA business associate agreement, we’ve used Office 365 to unify communications across the office with confidence. Tasks like coordinating schedules between employees and collaborating with peers outside the office who support patients now can be executed in an efficient, HIPAA-compliant manner. Office 365, from a business standpoint, has been a winning proposition.”




Edited by Braden Becker
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