What do you recommend to organizations that want to implement EHRs, but have concerns with data security?

EHRs can have a dramatic impact on improving patient safety, continuity of patient care and improving efficiencies in healthcare operations. However, the adoption rate for EHRs is slow; one of the leading reasons is the fear that patient information, including medical data, is suspect to technical security breaches.

Organizations should be very concerned with the implementation of new EHR systems and potential for security breaches. However, the concern should be for all systems and not just EHRs. During the selection process of an EHR, Healthcare organizations should review the security features of the proposed software, and determine if it meets the processes they have already implemented to comply with the HIPAA Privacy and Security regulations. Healthcare organizations can also discuss the data security functionality with organizations that already implemented the product.  Most EHR vendors are marketing other software products that are fully integrated with the EHR. Chances are if the EHR has minimal security features, then so do the rest of the software products.