The increasing pressure to implement meaningful use, reduce healthcare costs, and improve care outcomes while still protecting patient interests has led to strategic review and overhaul by many healthcare providers and vendors. 

Evaluating outsourcing options to allow industry experts to manage parts of the healthcare IT components is an obvious part of the equation, and the intensive capital expense, human resource, security, and maintenance demands specific to data centers make these prime candidates for cost savings.

However, balancing the resource benefits of outsourcing data center and hosting services with the risks of engaging an off-premise business associate is daunting in the wake of increasing PHI (protected health information) breaches and penalties.

Ultimately, finding the best blend of resources that can fulfill the availability, integrity, and confidentiality requirements to protect ePHI (electronic protected health information) - and thereby protecting the patients, covered entities, and business associates - is the challenge at hand.

This white paper explores the impact of HITECH and HIPAA on data centers. It includes a description of a HIPAA compliant data center IT architecture, contractual requirements, benefits and risks of data center outsourcing, and vendor selection criteria.

Call us at 734.213.2020, or email us at contactus@otava.com with any additional HIPAA hosting questions or concerns.