NeMCMHA implements Access Smart’s Network Access Control Solutions

Network access control solutions are needed more today than ever before because one of the key components in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the expansion of electronic health records (EHR) and personal health records (PHR) services.  While great debates are going on throughout the country regarding IRS enforcement, using data for political gains and government access to patient records, the elephant in the room is still securely authenticating the access to a person’s health records.  HIPAA and HITECH are not going away.  Plus, according to resent Ponemon Institute’s “2013 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis” May 2013, healthcare had the highest number of data breach costs in 2012.

Part of any healthcare service is the use of computers for patient health records, accounting, communications, remote connections and more. Frequently doctors, nurses and administrators manage their own user names and passwords to authenticate into the facility’s servers. Security experts know IT centralized passwords are more secure than user managed ones. To protect digital information and stay ahead of the mandated HIPAA and HITECH laws, Northeast Michigan Community Mental Health Authority (NeMCMHA) started investigating different network access control solutions.

NeMCMHA is CARF accredited in 21 programs. NeMCMHA has a staff of approximately 450 full-time and part-time employees whose dedication facilitates, manages and provides services for the support and treatment of people with mental, emotional and developmental disabilities, including those whose disabilities co-occur with substance use.

The number one way patients and medical staff will access those records will still be a user name and password.  A national deployment of a public key infrastructure (PKI) system for patients will require an electron national identification card.  This is a major concern of almost every privacy group.  A One Time Password (or OTP) won’t work because the different servers cannot by synchronized to a single number.  Biometrics by itself is also not a solution for the time it take to do a one-to-many search and who stored the biometric templates, the government?

Power LogOn combines the convenience of password with the security of key management.  Power LogOn brings in multifactor authentication at a fraction of the price of PKI and OTP.  Power LogOn can be combined with other card services like company ID badge, physical access control, time and attendance, payment, etc.  Click the link to learn more about Power LogOn and our network access control solutions.

Download our latest case study explaining the issues facing NeMCMHA for a network access control solution, and how Power LogOn met the call.