PokitDok Receives EHNAC HIE, Healthcare Cloud Accreditations

January 11, 2017 - PokitDok has received accreditation from the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), the software development company announced earlier this week.

The company met the requirements for both the Outsourced Services Accreditation Program (OSAP) for Health Information Exchange (HIE) and the Cloud-Enabled Accreditation Program (CEAP).

PokitDok earned the accreditation for its work in health data processing and transactions and its compliance with industry-established standards and HIPAA regulations. PokitDok was evaluated on privacy, security, technical performance, business practices,and organizational resources and how they reflect outsourcing policies and procedures.

“Information technology in the cloud – especially in the healthcare industry, which involves valuable (PHI) – presents a critically unique set of privacy and security challenges when it comes to healthcare data exchange,” said Lee Barrett, Executive Director of EHNAC.

“Organizations such as PokitDok are leading the movement toward ensuring superior capabilities in the areas of privacy, security and standards by seeking to further demonstrate their commitment to these security measures above and beyond.”

PokitDok met all 74 unique requirements required by the CEAP program. EHNAC assessed PokitDok’s health information oversight for meeting privacy and security, HIPAA, HITECH, Omnibus Rule, and ACA requirements along with technical performance, business processes, and resource management.

It was also determined that PokitDok meets all EHNAC criteria for managing and transferring PHI.

Many healthcare organizations are facing staffing shortages for managing health IT infrastructure solutions are are looking to outsourcing to accommodate their need for employees they may not need full time, or are not available on-premise.  

“Outsourcing of various services has become a large and growing need for healthcare organizations that seek to create operational efficiencies and reduce costs. But privacy, security and confidentiality of PHI continues to be a crucial requirement for all associated business partners,” continued Barrett.

A Harvey Nash survey conducted last November found that the technology skills shortage has risen to the highest level since the recession almost a decade ago.

The survey found that although CIOs preferred to hire IT staff on a full-time basis, more CIOs have begun exploring the benefits of adding contingent employees to their IT staff over the past several years. Twelve percent of respondents sources half or mare of their staff from flexible or contingent contracts.

“There does appear to be a small but steady growth in the number of IT leaders using flexible contingent labour for more than half of their technology team,” survey authors reported. “Since 2011 this highly contingent-orientated community has grown by 33 percent. IT leaders have been increasingly looking at outsourcing as a means of accessing skills and capability compared to the more traditional view of outsourcing to save costs. As project demands grow, the contingent labour force is probably the fastest way to train people on board.”

The survey counted the healthcare industry among the most likely to increase dependence on outsourced IT labor over the next several years, making accreditations such as PokitDok’s important to the organizations considering outsourcing parts of their IT staff.

“To be classified amongst the EHNAC OSAP-accredited organizations, PokitDok has met a high standard in these areas as it relates to consent, authorization, authentication, access and audit procedures and therefore establishes themselves among an elite group of trustworthy partners,” Barrett concluded.

While outsourced, contingent employees may solve some IT staff shortage issues, it is not the answer to the IT skill shortage. As health IT infrastructure technology becomes more advanced, more organizations are looking for IT staff with specific skills to manage and monitor new systems. Organizations may not be able to obtain or afford a full-time IT employee at that skill level, making an outsourced employee the only viable option.

Outsourcing IT staff intends to save healthcare organizations money by allowing them to assess if certain IT positions are needed full-time. Organizations with ‘set it and forget it’ cloud or analytic solutions may not need a full-time professional monitoring their infrastructure constantly and may benefit greatly from contingent IT employees

Dig Deeper:

• Understanding HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Options for Health IT
• Healthcare Cloud Becoming Critical IT Infrastructure Tool