Why Your Medical Practice Needs Healthcare-Focused, Cloud-Hosted IT

When it comes to your medical practice hosting your Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Health Records (EHR), today you have choices. Options include self-hosting, software publisher hosting, and utilizing a hosting provider. There are a myriad of cloud-hosted providers and the EHR vendors themselves. We see organizations who are moving their EHR from on-premises hosting to cloud hosting for reasons of support costs, personnel constraints, and the need for greater security. So how do you narrow your choices down for your medical practice? Consider the advantages of working with a Healthcare focused hosting/IT support provider.

Consider the advantages of working with a cloud healthcare focused hosting/IT support provider.

Healthcare entities have specialized needs when it comes to IT and hosting. The healthcare industry, with its valuable databases of extensive patient health information (PHI) has become the most-breached industry sector; and, so, security is a primary concern. This and compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, HITECH, and PCI add complexity and expense to protecting data. Some of this responsibility can be shifted to your hosting provider provided they understand the security needs of healthcare. Make sure your hosting provider has expertise and experience in the security requirements and regulations unique to healthcare.

When working with any hosting/support provider, ask about how they secure and protect your data. Don’t accept generalities and ask for the details of their cybersecurity protocols. Ask about their Network Operations Center (NOC) and Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities as well their protections around ransomware and best practices for disaster recovery. There is a good chance that there is a breach in your future. You will need to be able to trust and lean on your hosting/support provider to navigate and recover from an incident. Also ask your hosting/support provider if they can deliver the Security Risk Assessment required by HIPAA annually and other services such as Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM), vulnerability scans, penetration testing, and phishing simulations. These often come up when it is time to renew your healthcare cyberinsurance policy – along with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Endpoint Defense and Response (EDR) deployment.

There is a good chance that there is a breach in your future. You will need to be able to trust and lean on your hosting/support provider to navigate and recover from an incident.

When it comes to hosting your EHR, we find most hosting companies, including Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, set up your EHR in a shared environment. The side effects of this include limited access or no access to the data set other than via the application, thus limiting your ability to use data analytics tools. Look for a hosting provider who provides access to the entire database if you require analytics and/or multiple integration engines such as HIE7, Mirth, Rosetta, Qvera, or other integration engines. With the near universal use of Microsoft 365 in the healthcare industry, it also makes sense to work with a partner that can integrate Azure Active Directory with your EHR.

One of the other items to consider when choosing a hosting company is what options are available for delivering your applications to end users. Hosting frees an organization from managing applications running on a local PC and allows applications to be delivered via a variety of technologies including web access, Remote Desktop Services, Citrix, and Azure Virtual Desktop. This makes delivery of applications a snap both onsite and for remote users. Make sure your hosting provider understands your business and can provide you with the hosting technology that best suits your operation.

Make sure your hosting provider understands your business and can provide you with the hosting technology that best suits your operation.

What we at Med Tech Solutions have seen in more than 15 years of hosting EHR systems in the cloud is superior performance, rock-solid system uptime, and enhanced security that is difficult to match in a local environment. Our exclusive focus on healthcare and our Practice-Centered Care™ approach provides a winning partner to support you in your cloud journey. The move to the cloud is by no means an easy decision – nor an easy process. We will help guide you all along the way – contact us today!