HIPAA and IT Asset Management in Healthcare

Do you want to know how IT best practices can help with your Healthcare regulatory challenges? Corporate IT asset management (ITAM) capabilities are a great example. They’re commonly extended to other business functions as part of digital transformation or enterprise service management strategies to help manage non-IT technology assets (ITAM is the third most-shared IT service management (ITSM) capability after incident and service request management).

A valuable non-IT ITAM use case is in Healthcare scenarios, where ITAM can help with the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This blog explains where and how ITAM supports HIPAA requirements across various compliance and efficiency needs, covering IT-provided and medical technology assets.

This @SysAid blog explains where and how #ITAM supports HIPAA requirements across various compliance and efficiency needs, covering IT-provided and medical technology assets. #Healthcare #HIPAA #ServiceDesk Share on X

A Healthcare customer example

Church Health uses SysAid to address its operational challenges, with ticketing and asset management used across the organization – for example, for physical facility repairs, credentialing, employee onboarding, software troubleshooting, tickets for collecting donated medical equipment, and adding new healthcare providers, drugs, or treatments to a picklist in the system.

Another Healthcare-industry-specific function SysAid fulfills for Chruch Health is monitoring encryption on the organization’s laptops. It helps ensure patient medical information is secure and confidential, even in the event of a lost device, avoiding the risk of a costly HIPAA breach.

It’s an important capability given that, in 2022, an average of 1.94 healthcare data breaches of 500 or more records were reported daily.

The impact of HIPAA in a nutshell

There are a number of key HIPAA coverage areas, including:

• Protecting patient confidentiality, with patients’ personal health information (PHI) kept confidential
• Standardizing data security
• Portability of healthcare coverage
• Patient rights to access and control how their PHI is used
• Streamlining administrative processes through electronic health transactions
• Promoting electronic health records (EHRs), with standards for data storage and exchange to improve interoperability between systems
• Accountability and penalties for HIPAA violations (civil and criminal)
• Regulatory compliance.

While ITAM can’t help with all of these HIPAA coverage areas, there are more ITAM-related opportunities than people might think, especially across:

• Inventory management
• Risk management and security
• Policy enforcement and compliance
• Cost management.

Each opportunity area is covered below, starting with inventory management as a foundation for the required HIPAA compliance and cost efficiency.

Did you know that inventory management can be used as a foundation for the required HIPAA compliance and cost efficiency? Check out this @SysAid blog to understand more. #Healthcare #ITSM #HIPAA Share on X

Inventory management

While inventory management might not initially seem particularly relevant to HIPAA requirements, these ITAM capabilities provide the solid ITAM foundation upon which many other opportunities stand. Inventory management can cover a variety of relevant assets, from traditional networked-connected personal-productivity devices (including mobile devices) to shared assets, virtual desktops, and non-network-connected assets.

In particular, inventory management (when combined with network discovery) helps with asset Identification, such that a healthcare organization knows what hardware and software assets are employed across various sites, including those of hybrid workers. The resultant up-to-date asset inventory supports the prevention of unauthorized access to corporate systems containing PHI.

ITAM inventory-management-based capabilities also help to classify assets based on their importance and the type of information they hold. This approach makes it easier to implement security controls in accordance with HIPAA requirements.

Risk management and security

There are many opportunities where ITAM capabilities can help with HIPAA requirements related to risk management and security. These opportunities include:

• Security configuration enforcement – healthcare organizations can manage the settings and configurations of devices and software using ITAM to help ensure they meet the security standards necessary to protect PHI.
• Automated patch management – ITAM can automate the application of security patches across the IT estate. This capability makes it easier to prevent and address information-security vulnerabilities that could compromise PHI security.
• Vendor risk assessment – ITAM capabilities can assist a healthcare organization in evaluating the compliance levels of third-party vendors with access to PHI to ensure they meet HIPAA requirements.
• Unauthorized access monitoring – ITAM solutions can help healthcare organizations identify unauthorized or suspicious system access by continuously monitoring assets. This ITAM capability enhances their ability to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of PHI.
• End-of-life management – by identifying and managing assets near the end of their life cycle, healthcare organizations can not only improve operational security, especially when older assets no longer receive security updates, but also ensure that any PHI on assets is either securely transferred or destroyed (and in line with agreed ITAM practices).

There are many opportunities where #ITAM capabilities can help with #HIPAA requirements related to risk management and #security. Five opportunities are listed & explained in this blog. #servicedesk #healthcare #ITSM Share on X

Policy enforcement and compliance

While many of the previous opportunities related to security and the associated risks, especially unauthorized access to PHI, healthcare organizations can use ITAM capabilities – particularly ITAM tools (or ITSM tools with ITAM capabilities) – to facilitate compliance-based activities. For example, ITAM tool policy management capabilities can enforce policies on hardware and software usage to help ensure that only authorized and compliant systems can access or store PHI. ITAM tools can also perform regular compliance checks to ensure all assets meet HIPAA regulations, minimizing legal risks. Finally, fit-for-purpose ITAM tools will provide robust reporting capabilities to support internal and external audits’ data and information needs or meet regulatory scrutiny to prove HIPAA compliance.

Check out this @SysAid blog to learn about some of the ways that #ITAM can make it easier for healthcare organizations to comply with #HIPAA regulations – across traditional IT and medical technology. #healthcare Share on X

Cost management

Finally, ITAM capabilities can help to minimize or optimize operational and HIPAA-related costs. Knowing the assets in use and their purpose allows healthcare organizations to optimize their asset resources. The realized cost savings can be used for other purposes, including improving security measures and compliance practices. ITAM tools can also provide more granular information on the costs of employing different asset types. This data can be used to make more cost-effective future asset decisions or to better understand the costs associated with maintaining a HIPAA-compliant IT environment.

These are just some of the ways that ITAM can make it easier for healthcare organizations to comply with HIPAA regulations – across traditional IT and medical technology. Minimizing the risk of HIPAA penalties and legal repercussions and maintaining the trust of patients and stakeholders.

To learn more, please visit our dedicated Healthcare solution page.