Secure Authentication Is Key To Prescription Safety

摘要

In 2007, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center began a large-scale migration from paper forms to an application suite from Epic Systems, which makes software for managing patients' health data, prescription processing, billing, and other such tasks. The goals of the project are to streamline patient care management, increase the accuracy and accountability of caregivers treating patients, and support the clinical informatics group. The hospital estimates it's about 18% through the Epic deployment and says it's on track to complete the rollout by 2011. A critical part of the project is called Secure Authentication, which is the authentication and authorization component that regulates who can prescribe medication and creates an audit trail of who administers the medication. The hospital estimates it has spent approximately $120,000 on Secure Authentication to date-in line with its expectations-to meet authentication and authorization requirements driven by Ohio State Board of Pharmacy regulations. The board is responsible for enforcing the legal distribution of drugs, and its regulations call for positive identification of a user though some means other than a password.