Identity and access management (IAM) is getting harder. It used to be a single physician would view one record for one patient during one visit at one location, but now everything is multiplied. Healthcare providers are rapidly expanding their scope of influence by adding independent physicians, hospitals and other providers to their network. IAM is now a broader business challenge that not only affects security and compliance, but also patient safety, clinician satisfaction as well as IT resource utilization.

If anyone knows about the challenge of IAM, it’s Bobby Stokes, AVP Identity Management and Development Services of Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). HCA, recognized for security excellence, must share patient information securely and efficiently across 160+ hospitals, 1000 hospital affiliates, and 100,000+ users. Five percent of all U.S. inpatient admissions take place in a HCA facility. As Stokes said on last week’s webinar, “That’s an interesting mix of concerns.”

Today, IAM is a balancing act. First, healthcare organizations have a responsibility to ensure the privacy of protected health information from internal and external threats. Inappropriate access to data has resulted in multiple data privacy violations recently (see here and here), and is an area that providers need to take greater control of. Second, data has to be easily available for clinicians to consume and comprehend. Clinician workflows can be streamlined by reducing the number of system log-ins and by providing patient context across those systems. Lastly, from a provisioning perspective, IT needs tools to manage the sheer volume of requests they are faced with. Without solutions that can automate provisioning processes, IT is forced to spend excessive amounts of time on user provisioning, which can also cause delays in clinician access.

If you missed last week’s webinar where Bobby Stokes talked about how HCA approaches identity and access management, then you can catch the recording here.