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With healthcare organizations facing escalating cyberattacks, one-time security assessment scores and snapshot certifications are no longer enough. The HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) provides an unmatched security foundation based on continuous assessment and controls.

<hr />

<h6>WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SECURE YOUR PRACTICE</h6>
<h4>The costs of data ransom, regulatory fines, business disruption, and loss of patient trust have made security controls for critical healthcare data a top priority for IT professionals.</h4>
IT security and compliance regulations and best practices are defined by an array of federal and state regulations and industry standards, as well as policies and frameworks from a variety of associations and bodies. All that makes it difficult for provider organizations to fully understand what they need to do to mitigate security risk. For many organizations, an annual HIPAA assessment acts as the foundation for their security measures, but today’s threat landscape is evolving in sophisticated ways every day.

And the stakes are high.

Without the proper systems in place, healthcare organizations may be exposed to security breaches or noncompliance with industry standards. Penalties can be directed at providers, the organization, and even individuals who have responsibility for the organization’s security policies and practices. In addition, the impact of bad press and loss of patient trust may never be fully recoverable.

Unfortunately, many providers still struggle to create and maintain effective risk-mitigation policies and procedures. Demands for providers and staff to serve more patients often lead to security controls being softened for user convenience. For resource-constrained healthcare IT departments, an additional challenge is to understand the requirements and implement them with an IT strategy that is also affordable, manageable, and scalable over time.

Cloud hosting that is HITRUST CSF-certified is one of the most strategic and effective ways for healthcare organizations to gain confidence in their IT security posture. By including federal and state regulations, standards, and frameworks, and incorporating a risk-based approach, the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) helps organizations address risk through a comprehensive and flexible framework of prescriptive and scalable security controls.

<strong>Cloud hosting that is HITRUST CSF-certified is one of the most strategic and effective ways for healthcare organizations to gain confidence in their IT security posture.</strong>
<h4>Where HIPAA, HITECH, and HITRUST Overlap</h4>
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) defines standards for organizations to safeguard patient data, and repercussions if those organizations fail to do so. Healthcare organizations and business associates must implement and prove—through annual HIPAA audits and assessments—that they have put safeguards in place to protect patients’ personal health information (PHI)

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act expanded the scope of privacy and security protections within HIPAA compliance. HITECH introduced different methods of audit and assessment and increased fines, motivating organizations to take security and compliance seriously

But over more than two decades of existence, HIPAA has become complicated by interpretations, state and local protections, and health IT advances that lawmakers are struggling to keep up with. The result is that for most provider organizations, simply meeting HIPAA requirements is not enough to keep data secure.

That’s where HITRUST comes in.

<strong>HIPAA ENFORCEMENT UPDATES TIMELINE</strong>

1996
HIPAA ENACTED
$100 CMP per violation with $25K annual limit

2003
INTERIM RULE
Interim rule issued; 2005 enforcement provisions proposed

2006
HIPAA ENFORCEMENT RULE
Penalties still $100 per violation and $25K annual limit

2009
HITECH ACT
4-tier culpability model; $1.5M annual limit for all tiers for identical violations

2019
NEW CMP ANNUAL LIMITS
$25K limit for tier
$100K limit for tier 2
$250K limit for tier 3

<strong>HITRUST AND THE COMMON SECURITY FRAMEWORK (CSF)</strong>
<h4><strong>
While HIPAA is an act that details standards for compliance, HITRUST is an organization that specifies rigorous security requirements and controls used to measure an organization’s ability to safeguard PHI.
</strong></h4>
<strong>HITRUST INTEGRATES 40+ GLOBAL SECURITY STANDARDS</strong>

HITRUST is one of the most widely adopted security frameworks, covering more than 40 authoritative sources including these global standards
<ul>
 	<li>HIPAA</li>
 	<li>National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)</li>
 	<li>International Organization for Standardization (ISO)</li>
 	<li>Payment Card Industry (PCI)</li>
 	<li>Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Red Flag</li>
 	<li>Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT)</li>
</ul>
The HITRUST organization helps organizations address the complexities and achieve compliance with HIPAA regulations using the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF). HITRUST CSF is used to measure the requirements of the HIPAA Security Rule along with other relevant and comprehensive global standards, regulations, and frameworks to provide a clear and prescriptive set of controls for achieving HIPAA compliance. There are currently more than 400 HITRUST controls and implementation requirements, making this certification a significant commitment. This is far more stringent than typical audits such as SSAE 18 and SOC 2 that are often touted by datacenters, but which simply demonstrate snapshot compliance to physical and logical controls.

The HITRUST CSF has become the definitive information-protection framework for the healthcare industry. It is the industry gold standard and the benchmark against which organizations measure themselves when charged with safeguarding PHI. HITRUST certification attests that an organization has met the relevant requirements within the CSF framework. Certification of controls testing by a third party gives vendors a common benchmark of multiple relevant standards to meet the requirements for every client organization.

<strong>MTSCloud is a HITRUST CSF-certified platform</strong>

The Med Tech Solutions (MTS) private cloud platform has achieved HITRUST CSF certification since 2019. This demonstrates that MTS has met key information-protection requirements related to how information is accessed and stored in its cloud environment. Certification places us in an elite group of organizations worldwide who have worked to meet this rigorous security framework.

The MTS Cloud HITRUST CSF-certified platform helps organizations manage risk, improve security posture, and meet compliance requirements. This commitment helps our clients set high standards in protecting patient and business data. HITRUST, which pulls from numerous regulatory frameworks including NIST, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, has become the gold standard in protecting healthcare information.

For healthcare practices—as well as organizations who provide IT services to support those practices—a cloud hosting partner that is HITRUST CSF certified gives immediate peace of mind. and saves these organizations from conducting time-consuming vendor compliance audits. Knowing that the vendor follows the HITRUST CSF framework provides a level of assurance that ePHI is handled in a consistent manner. This, in turn, saves time and results in better synergies.

In addition to implementing the controls required for our private cloud infrastructure, we also apply the extensive learnings from the process of HITRUST certification to every aspect of our business. We are a security-first cloud and IT services provider, with an ongoing mission to protect our clients’ critical data and their ability to serve patients.

Talk to us about moving your critical patient and practice applications to the MTSCloud.

<strong>“Security is a big concern for all organizations, especially when you’re dealing with personal health information. The HITRUST certification that MTS was able to provide made the security analysis and risk assessment that we have in place very easy. It gives me the confidence knowing that we have the best security in place to be able to give the providers and the patients peace of mind, knowing that their data is protected in that hosted environment.”
</strong>

<strong>Armando Besné
</strong>senior manager of CIS at MTS client OptumCare<strong>
</strong>

<strong>“The fact that Med Tech Solutions has achieved HITRUST CSF Certification attests to the high quality of their information risk management and compliance program.”</strong>

HITRUST CSF Certified

<strong>BIMAI SHETH</strong>

VICE PRESIDENT OF ASSURANCE SERVICES, HITRUST

Learn how our HITRUST-certified cloud hosting can improve your organization’s privacy and security stance. Contact us at info@medtechsolutions.com

Med Tech Solutions (MTS) creates technology systems that work the way healthcare practices work. Our Practice-Centered Care services use dedicated IT Care Teams to ensure that technology systems support essential clinical workflows. Provider organizations and networks get a secure, reliable IT infrastructure, optimized clinical and business applications, and full end-user support so they can focus on patient care. MTS was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Valencia, California. The company has been recognized as an Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Company and a Channel Futures MSP 501 provider, and has achieved HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) certification for its cloud platform. Learn more at medtechsolutions.com.

<strong>Med Tech Solutions</strong>

medtechsolutions.com | 877.687.1222

Cloud Confidence for Healthcare with HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF)

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<h3>A Step-by-Step Approach to Successful Analysis, Planning, and Testing</h3>
&nbsp;
<h4>Upgrade your NextGen Enterprise EHR without missing a beat.</h4>
Staying on top of updates for mission-critical software such as your NextGen electronic health record (EHR) can feel overwhelming for IT departments. Major releases such as the NextGen Enterprise Spring ’21 release (v6.2021.1) typically occur once or twice a year and bring new enhancements, features, and fixes. These add capabilities, but can also create significant change for your organization. Smaller updates for NextGen ancillary products, medications, and formularies may be exactly what you’ve been waiting for, and monthly patch updates fix known issues on a regular basis, but both take IT resources away from other important projects.
<h4>With all of these updates to maintain a healthy system, it’s no wonder your IT group can struggle to stay on top of it all.</h4>
This NextGen Upgrade Guide for IT lays out proven strategies to upgrade your EHR as smoothly and efficiently as possible so your practice can get back to what it does best—taking care of patients.
<h4>Determine your “why”</h4>
Before you get started, take a step back and analyze why you need this new release. For many practices, there’s no question it has to happen as soon as possible. Some practices may be able to wait and upgrade NextGen at a time that better matches other IT plans and initiatives. Make sure you understand these three important elements of the NextGen v6.2021.1 release:
<ol>
 	<li><strong>Regulatory compliance.</strong> The new release fully supports compliance with the 21st Century Cures Act, including new information blocking requirements, and is on track to meet ONC 2015 Edition Cures Update Criteria for Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) requirements.
<em>Important: If your providers participate in MIPS, you must upgrade to 6.2021 prior to 2023 reporting. While 2023 may sound far-off, there may be several time-consuming steps before you can complete your upgrade in production.</em></li>
 	<li><strong>Latest operating systems.</strong> The new release requires the latest operating systems (OSes) for Microsoft Windows, Windows Server, and SQL Server. If you need to update those as well, that must happen before you begin your NextGen upgrade.
<em>Important: OS and database upgrades can have unintended consequences, such as a need for updated server hardware. If you’ve been considering moving your EHR to the cloud, this might be the tipping point.</em></li>
 	<li><strong>New patient portal.</strong> With this release, the new Patient Experience Platform (PxP) replaces the Patient Portal, providing a better web presence and more user-friendly experience for patients.
<em>Important: The Patient Portal will no longer be integrated in NextGen v6.2021 and higher, so the new PxP portal must be installed and migrated at the same time as the EHR and database upgrades.</em></li>
</ol>

NextGen Upgrade Guide for IT

<h3>Solve multiple technology and business challenges with one strategic move.</h3>
What if there was one IT decision you could make that could improve your security posture, reduce downtime risks, scale down your overall IT costs, eliminate surprise infrastructure expenses, and help your providers and staff be more efficient and less frustrated by technology? Moving to the cloud could be that decision.

With your clinical and business applications in the cloud, you get fast, secure, and reliable access to your practice and patient data. The difference is, you no longer have tens—or hundreds—of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and software sitting in your office.

That’s equipment and software you no longer need to buy, house, insure, maintain, secure, upgrade, troubleshoot, and replace every few years. Without that technology overhead burden, you can continue to build your practice knowing that you have the IT resiliency to respond to new requirements without breaking a sweat.

Explore why this one move can solve your biggest HIT worries.
<h4>Reason 1 - The cloud is secure and compliant—when it’s built for healthcare.</h4>
With lives and personal health information at stake, healthcare organizations are especially vulnerable to security threats. We protect your private or public cloud infrastructure with best-in-class security experts and technology, from a managed security operations center (SOC) to incident response teams, to ensure continuity of service. Our cloud team works side-by-side with these experts to make sure that your environment is protected to the fullest possible extent, and that we can respond immediately to threats to minimize your risk.

In addition, our HITRUST certification gives your practice risk assurance for both internal and external stakeholders, including regulators, and eases your HIPAA compliance audits. A cloud platform built for healthcare is certified to meet the stringent requirements for the HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF). This is the gold standard for healthcare organizations who need to safeguard patients’ personal health information and critical practice data. HITRUST CSF consolidates more than 15 global security standards and regulations (including HIPAA, PCI, COBIT, NIST, ISO, FTC, and state laws) along with leading practice frameworks.

<strong>“The fact that Med Tech Solutions has achieved HITRUST CSF Certification attests to the high quality of their information risk management and compliance program.”</strong>

BIMAL SHETH, VICE PRESIDENT OF ASSURANCE SERVICES
<strong>HITRUST</strong>
<h4>Reason 2 - The cloud offers enterprise-level performance</h4>
Private, public, and hybrid cloud environments offer enterprise-level hardware and redundancy, which can be cost-prohibitive for providers to duplicate and maintain with on-premise systems. This is especially true when supply chain issues increase costs and reduce availability for datacenter hardware. Multiple layers of redundancy ensure the most resilient infrastructure for your workloads so you can continue to serve patients and build your business in almost any situation. Even if disaster strikes, we can have your organization online and running again within hours.

The state-of-the-art hardware and software in our private cloud can also give you significantly faster performance. That means faster response when your providers access the EHR in an exam room with a patient, collaborate with a specialist online, or keep up with email and business matters. With cloud costs spread across thousands of customers based on their usage, even small organizations gain access to constantly up-to-date enterprise hardware and software, including redundant systems to protect critical data and keep workers connected no matter what.

<strong>“Moving over to MTS, I was able to move a majority of my core systems over to virtual servers and solid state hard drives—environments that were much beefier and allowed me to grow and deliver the performance that providers expected.”</strong>

ARMANDO BESNÉ
<strong>OptumCare</strong>
<h4>Reason 3 - The cloud is flexible and scalable</h4>
Cloud-based systems can easily expand or contract to meet changing computing requirements. That could be to provision staff to work from home rather than the office, or to add new applications such as population health tracking or telehealth. These changes no longer require the time and money to define, purchase, set up, and maintain new servers and software. Your IT group simply specifies the requirements for the new application or service, and within hours your cloud-based infrastructure can be ready to service the new workload.

By putting your systems in the cloud, you pay for only what you use. Cloud-based computing and data resources easily scale almost immediately to support expanding or contracting staff, new locations, and adding or changing practice specialties or applications. In contrast, scaling with on-premise equipment means buying and deploying new systems, which is expensive and time-consuming under the best of circumstances. If requirements change during a crisis, responding effectively is almost impossible.

<strong>“When it comes down to the scale of the growth of our business, we’re able to do that easily with the cloud. We have more time now to focus on providing healthcare and seeing the future on how we’re going to continue to grow the business rather than having to worry about the IT infrastructure internally.”</strong>

MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ, IT DIRECTOR
<strong>Arroyo Vista Family Health Center</strong>
<h4>Reason 4 -  The cloud supports analytics and value-added programs</h4>
By securely hosting your patient and practice data on the cloud, you gain the power of in-depth, near real-time analytics. Intuitive, customizable dashboards offer insights into provider productivity and patient and population health, and support reporting requirements for additional reimbursement opportunities.

With cloud-based fixed costs and guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs), your IT teams can confidently plan new value-added programs to support your practice’s growth and efficiency. When your in-house IT resources spend less time maintaining servers, they can focus on work that improves your business processes and efficiencies, as well as workflows and patient experiences.

<strong>MTS PRACTICE DATA ANALYTICS provides powerful, customizable dashboards that offer insights into provider productivity and population health, and support reporting requirements for additional reimbursement opportunities.</strong>
<h4>Reason 5 - The cloud requires minimal upfront cost</h4>
By moving from capital expenditures (upfront costs) to operating expenses (monthly payments for consumed services), your practice can save capital for other important equipment or growth initiatives. And there’s no need to compromise due to budget. We continuously invest in the most reliable, proven, and highest performing hardware and software in our HITRUST CSFcertified private cloud environments to ensure optimum performance and security. Because we spread those costs across all of our hosting customers, you can deploy a bestof-breed solution that is ideally suited to your situation rather than just what you can afford at the time you need new capabilities. And if public or hybrid cloud is a better option for your situation, we’ll make sure you get what you need at the budget you set.

Upfront costs for on-premise data center
<ul>
 	<li>NETWORK HARDWARE/WARRANTIES</li>
 	<li>BACK-UP SYSTEMS</li>
 	<li>UNINTERRUPTABLE POWER SUPPLY</li>
 	<li>UTILITIES/OPERATIONS</li>
 	<li>ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE LICENSES</li>
 	<li>MANAGED SECURITY SERVICES</li>
 	<li>INCIDENT RESPONSE SERVICES</li>
</ul>
Included in the cloud but pay only for your share
<h4>Reason 6 - The cloud offers lower fixed costs</h4>
With on-premise systems, IT costs can be unpredictable, and unforeseen datacenter costs can quickly undermine other important IT initiatives. By shifting on-premise server loads to the cloud, the direct support costs of these systems also shift to the cloud provider, who handles all the replacements, upgrades, patches, and backups. These cloud services can be purchased as a fixed monthly fee that includes management services, which can be both lower—and more predictable—than in-house costs.

<strong>“I was able to save roughly a quarter of a million dollars moving from my old vendor to MTS with a more robust, higher-performing solution. The budget that I was able to free up allowed me to add more staff to my organization and that allows me to support the applications that we’re serving to our providers.”</strong>

ARMANDO BESNÉ
<strong>OptumCare</strong>
<h4>MTS services for any cloud environment</h4>
<ul>
 	<li>The fastest and safest cloud environments, purpose-built for healthcare, including installation, deployment, and maintenance</li>
 	<li>A team of security and compliance experts to assess, implement, and maintain secure and compliant environments</li>
 	<li>Comprehensive services to configure, deploy, maintain, and optimize system and operational workflow</li>
 	<li>24/7 help desk to keep devices, infrastructure, and applications running at their best, with support plans that are tailored to meet existing and future needs</li>
</ul>
<h4>Sometimes the most strategic solution is the one right in front of you.</h4>
If you’re ready to protect the critical patient and practice data you depend on and to improve your practice’s resiliency and efficiency, boost provider productivity and satisfaction, while still keeping an eye on the budget, let us help you run the numbers.

<strong>Lose the worries. Let us help.</strong>

CONTACT US AT
info@medtechsolutions.com

<strong>Med Tech Solutions</strong>

Med Tech Solutions (MTS) creates technology systems that work the way healthcare practices work. Our Practice-Centered CareTM services use dedicated IT Care Teams to ensure technology systems support essential clinical workflows and strategic business plans. Provider organizations and networks can count on a secure, reliable IT infrastructure, optimized clinical and business applications, and full end-user support so they can focus on patient care. MTS was founded in 2006 in Valencia, California, and serves thousands of healthcare practices nationwide. The company has been recognized as a six-time Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Company and a Channel Futures MSP 501 provider, and it has achieved HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) certification for its cloud platform. Learn more at www.medtechsolutions.com.

6 Reasons Why One Strategic Move Can Solve Your Biggest HIT Headaches

Let us help your practice today.

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