Identity and Access Management (IAM) for the Healthcare Industry

Healthcare organizations need to adhere to industry regulations and compliance mandates while providing a frictionless user experience for their customers, workforce, and partners. The pandemic forced healthcare organizations to speed up their digital transformations, as remote work, telemedicine, government-supported vaccine rollouts, and other matters changed the landscape. Healthcare organizations are also under attack by bad actors, who are using ransomware as a tool to hold hospitals and other medical providers hostage. The CyberPeace Institute found 295 known cyberattacks occurred in the healthcare sector between June 2, 2020, and December 3, 2021, with at least 39 different ransomware groups targeting the sector.

Healthcare organizations still using legacy systems are unable to handle users who need secure access to on-premises, cloud, and SaaS apps from any device at any time. Migrating to modern identity and access management (IAM) solutions improves the user experience and access to necessary resources while protecting against ransomware and other cyberattacks.

Healthcare organizations don’t work in a vacuum. Hospitals, providers, insurance companies, billing services, regulatory agencies, and patients and their caregivers are interconnected. Regulations also dictate how patient data is protected and shared, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

More organizations are adopting a Zero Trust approach, where you trust no one and verify everything. This helps keep bad actors and rogue insiders from stealing data, installing ransomware, or carrying out other malicious activity. Identity and access management for workforce and customers is part of the Zero Trust security framework, with powerful features that extend to the data layer to protect your valuable customer data and reduce your risk of breach.

With more workers requiring remote access, from telehealth providers to billing specialists, and IT teams managing an increasing number of apps and devices, you need ways to streamline operations while protecting against cyberattacks and data breaches. Key benefits of workforce IAM include:

Increase Security 

Combat increasingly sophisticated threats with capabilities like API security and identity verification so you can feel confident that only the right people are accessing the right resources. Identify verification and multi-factor authentication (MFA) limit the risk of bad actors using compromised credentials or other personal identifiable information (PII) obtained through phishing attacks or stolen during data breaches. Between 2009 and 2021, almost 4,500 healthcare data breaches of 500 or more records were reported to the Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, compromising more than 314 million healthcare records. 

Easy Onboarding and Offboarding 

There were a lot of high-profile mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare sector in 2021. IAM eases the transition during M&A activity, as well as job changes and turnover, which can put an added strain on your HR department. Automated onboarding, offboarding, and provisioning allow you to change privileges across your organization based on roles as well as more granular attributes. 

Improve Productivity  

Single sign-on (SSO) lets you give workers seamless access to the resources they need. Employees typically need access to multiple apps throughout the day to do their jobs, so a single login to access all of them, rather than multiple accounts and passwords, improves productivity. For example, a call center supervisor might need access to email or other communications services, call center apps to assist patients and her employees in need of assistance, and so on. When SSO is combined with adaptive authentication, you’re able to match authentication requirements to the access being requested. By stepping up security only when warranted, such as apps with sensitive patient data, you minimize friction and deliver a better user experience. 

Lower IT Support Costs

As Ping has seen with healthcare clients, data silos can cause administration inefficiencies and high costs, which can be reduced with centralized identity management. In addition to those inefficiencies, the use of passwords by employees, partners, and customers can be costly. A study by Gartner found that between 20 and 50% of all help desk calls were due to password resets, while a study by Forrester found that the help desk labor cost for each password reset was around $70.  

Rather than relying on help desks for support, IAM allows healthcare organizations to provide users with self-service options that reduce their reliance on help desks for costly password resets and other account issues. 

Watch this short video to see how IAM for your healthcare workforce improves security and productivity.

Patient needs evolve over time, as they get sick or change doctors or insurance providers during annual enrollment periods. Having a secure, flexible system allows you to handle these changes more efficiently.

Secure Profiles

Unified profiles stored in a secure directory provide a single source of truth across your operations and your partner operations so you can deliver a consistent experience and personalized interactions. Customer data preferences are also stored for data and privacy compliance. For example, a patient undergoing treatment for a condition may have to interact with many organizations, such as a health insurance company and a medical team that includes in-network providers, out-of-network specialists, pharmacies, labs, and other providers that need to share the data that has been authorized by the patient and nothing more. 

Improve Customer Experience

Frictionless login experience with single sign-on allows patients to move between your apps and your partner apps (such as payment portals and telehealth providers) without having to create additional accounts and sign-on to each one.

Prevent Account Takeovers

Bad actors with compromised credentials are prevented from taking over patient accounts with multi-factor authentication, which requires users to prove their identities with two or more methods. This security measure also prevents bad actors from using a compromised user account as a gateway to your entire network.

Scalability

During peak times, like annual enrollment periods, CIAM allows you to scale up to meet demand as you attract new customers. It can also make mergers and acquisitions smoother as you move customer accounts from one company to another. 

Watch this short video to learn more about how easy it is for your customers to use a CIAM solution.

IAM solutions are available for organizations at all stages of their digital transformation. Please download our white paper Improve and Secure Healthcare Delivery with Digital Identity for more information.