Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.
Issue link: http://outpatientsurgery.uberflip.com/i/636774
responsible for maintenance costs, so you instantly have a large, specialized IT department that your facility otherwise might not be able to afford. More and more surgical facilities are going out of the closet and into the cloud; 38% of the 92 readers we polled last month are computing in the clouds and another 18% say they plan to do so shortly. Fears around security and the privacy of patient data might be causing some to hesitate moving to the cloud. It's under- standable to believe that protected data is safer in an on-site serv- er. "A lot of people have a misperception that cloud computing is not allowed under HIPAA security regulations," says Steve Spearman, the vice president of HIPAA-compliant services for Healthicity. "It's not true." Mr. Spearman says you can outsource functions that involve protected health information through busi- ness associates. Be sure, he says, to have your IT vendor sign what's called a BAA, or business associate's agreement. This HIPAA-required contract sets forth how your patient data will be handled and protected, as well as for what purposes and under what conditions, if any, you'll let them use it. From on-premise to in the cloud For Mary Meier, administrator of the Eye Center in Columbus, Ohio, the beauty of cloud computing is that it let her retire her IT hat. She doesn't have to worry about viruses or software updates, about terminals and servers going down, or about whether she has enough space or processing power. Her data is backed up daily. "You don't have IT issues with everything being off-site," says Ms. Meier, whose center has been on the cloud for 3 years now. "Before we went on the cloud, every day it seemed some- one's terminal was down. I don't have to mess with IT stuff on a 1 0 8 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6