Healthcare organizations to migrate many of their administrative and IT functions to the cloud for many great reasons, how fast and when they make that leap vary. According to a recent survey, healthcare leaders identified some of the main drivers for considering a shift to the cloud.
51% – Reduce IT capital expenses
40% – Address resource constraints
29% – Enhance services and capabilities
11% – Improve system performance
9% – Improve security
Given these motivating factors, here are seven (7) benefits a cloud service solution can provide to your healthcare enterprise.
Reduce Capital Expenses
Under constant pressure, the market demands that your healthcare company provides better services in the face of ever-constricting budgets. Moving IT and administrative tasks to the cloud may significantly lower your capital and operating expenses. Furthermore, cloud services can enhance and streamline these functions while freeing up your staff to focus more on patient care.
Increase Flexibility and Scalability
The COVID pandemic heightened the need for healthcare providers to adapt and respond to unpredictable events and emergencies more quickly than imaginable. Cloud technology companies bring greater flexibility to the healthcare industry, allowing your organization to grow and scale operations quickly to meet whatever needs arise.
Improve Communications and Customer Service
Staying connected to healthcare networks and to patients means changing the patient experience. Healthcare organizations benefit from enhanced communication tools for both clinical and non-clinical employees. A cloud-based Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) suite can make your staff more productive and efficient. In addition, a Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform will help increase your patient engagement rates and improve the overall customer experience scores. Patients are customers too; and look to organizations whom can provide omnichannel communications and superior care.
Enhance Data Security
Patient health information (PHI) has become a valuable commodity for cyber criminals, garnering even more money on the black market than credit card numbers or other financial data. So healthcare providers take data security very seriously.
Cloud platform providers like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure specialize in cloud security and dedicate vast resources to maintaining state-of-the-art hardware, software and security protocols. Because of this, they can offer a higher level of cyber security than healthcare enterprises are able to in their own, on-premises datacenters.
Better Regulatory Compliance
Technology providers that service the healthcare industry understand the state and federal compliance regulations governing patient data. For example, Amazon AWS maintains strict compliance with HIPPA and HITECH regulations for electronic PHI. This includes all of the Administrative, Technical and Physical Safeguards mandated by the HIPPA Security Rule.
Reliable Disaster Recovery
Operating on the cloud also ensures healthcare enterprises have robust disaster recovery protocols in place. HIPPA requires that all e-PHI is backed up in redundant servers at multiple locations. Technology providers have multiple storage and recovery solutions that can accommodate a wide range of disaster recovery scenarios. Real world examples show that targeting a public cloud as your DR landing zone is a terrific entry point to the cloud.
Protection from Ransomware
It’s not if your healthcare organization will be hit by ransomware; it’s when. The time is now to thwart ransomware with comprehensive, end-to-end protection. InterVision’s Ransomware Protection as a Service™ (RPaaS™) gives you peace of mind that you have everything in place to proactively manage threats, avoid ransom costs and simplify operations. Don’t wait for reactive triage; take the preventative approach to protect your healthcare organization.
If you are concerned about cybersecurity or seeking to improve your protection against ransomware attacks, visit our website or call 844.622.5710 to speak with one of our experts today.
