SPHER Audit Log monitoring Program
Many of our Medical Clients have asked us to explain the HIPAA requirement that states you must monitor your logs in your EMR/EHR systems to look for any suspicious access. Simply put, when you log on or off of your EMR/EHR software there is a log that records:
- What you looked at
- What you changed
- When you accessed it.
- Who you are
The problem is that in order to comply with HIPAA HITECH section 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(d) and 164.312(b) you must proactively watch and monitor these logs, making note of abnormal access. For example, your employee John is scheduled for 9-5 shift Monday – Friday. The logs show that for 3 months John logged in and accessed information during that time frame. One day John logs normal access to your EMR/EHR but after a 3 hour gap from 5pm – 8pm John logs back into your EMR system and accesses charts and information until 11:30pm at which point he logs off. This is an abnormal access and shows up in the log files. It could be authorized access, John could be covering for someone on second shift. Or it could be that John’s account has been compromised and his username and password is in use by someone who should not have access to PHI. In either case if the logs are not monitored you will not know of this out of the ordinary access and cannot take action. You must also document steps taken or not taken with each event. This would mean you have to spend hours and hours a day looking for something that may not be there.
Step1: SPHER receives an audit log file from EMR/EHR
Step 2: SPHER reviews all activity in the audit log file for suspicious behavior and decides based on past history if a flag needs to be sent to your e-mail
Step 3: SPHER sends you an alert when it identifies a potential issue
Step 4: You log into SPHER, review the incident and determine if action is require or all is well. You then log you action into the portal
SPHER is safe, secure and HIPAA Compliant. Let it do the work for you.
Please contact F1 Solutions for more information regarding this exciting new product [email protected]
Here is a list of EHR/EMR’s that integrate with SPHER:
Allscripts - Myway
AmazingCharts
AthenaClinicals
Care360
CareTracker
CPSI
eClinicalWorks
e-MDs - Solution Series
Healthland
iPatientCare
MacPractice MD
MedHost Medidox - RadiDox
MedInformatix
Medweb Image Server
NextGen
NextGen Ambulatory
Office Ally – EHR
OmniMD
Practice Fusion
PrimeClinical – Patient Chart
Manager
RamSoft PowerServer risPACS
