Memorial Hospital

Memorial Hospital is a not-for-profit independent community hospital that serves the acute and primary care needs of more than 40,000 residents of Union County and five surrounding counties. With a staff of more than 600, the hospital required a solution that would provide authorized staff with quick, secure access to patient records.

The solution needed to meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirement of positive identification when accessing electronic health records (EHR). The DigitalPersona authentication solution has allowed Memorial Hospital to meet the EHR security requirement, making them eligible for federal grant dollars. The hospital has also reduced IT costs associated with password resets.

As part of Memorial Hospital’s initiative to go paperless, PCs were placed in every patient’s room so that medical staff could access electronic health records (EHR) and applications. HIPAA requires healthcare organizations to positively identify users accessing EHR or other personal health information (PHI), so these systems are set to time out quickly, forcing users to repeatedly log on throughout the day.

The hospital’s helpdesk was receiving a high volume of calls for locked accounts and forgotten passwords because many of the users are contingent employees who work at the hospital only two or three days each month. Memorial Hospital needed a solution that would ensure only authorized staff could securely and conveniently access PCs, EHR and applications.

Memorial Hospital chose the DigitalPersona solution because of the ability to positively identify users, a requirement in the HIPAA mandate. The tight integration with the hospital’s current Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure was another key factor in the selection process.

DigitalPersona and U.are.U Fingerprint Readers eliminate the need to remember and type passwords, providing staff with fast, secure access to the hospital’s EHR and a multitude of applications.

By leveraging DigitalPersona and fingerprint biometrics, Memorial Hospital meets the HIPAA requirement to positively identify each user accessing their EHR. The hospital also uses DigitalPersona to provide convenient access to all of their applications, including Claims Administrator, Pathways Compliance Advisor, Embla, Medtuity, IMPAX, OBIX, Horizon Patient Folder, Horizon Business Folder, Softlab, Paragon and Systoc.

“The DigitalPersona solution provides quick, secure access to our electronic systems including our EHR, improving clinician-patient interaction at the point of care,” said Carl Zani, information systems director at Memorial Hospital of Union County. “Since deploying DigitalPersona, we’ve experienced a reduction in helpdesk calls for password resets, particularly from contingent staff. This improves overall efficiency and reduces our IT costs.”